Percivall Pott has influenced medicine and modern understanding of diseases. Many diseases today are his namesake including: Pott’s Fracture, Pott’s disease of the spine, and Pott’s puffy tumor. One disease which does not, yet is important to Pott's legacy is Chimney Sweeper's Carcinoma. Pott quickly recognized the association between carcinoma and chimney sweeps and published his findings in a piece titled “Chirurgical Observations relative to…the cancer of the scrotum.”
He wrote that the disease was, “ peculiar to a certain sort of people [ and ] which has not at least to my knowledge, been publicly noticed – I mean the chimney-sweepers ’ cancer. The disease, in these people, seems to derive its origin from a lodgment of soot in the rugae of the scrotum.”