Pancoast was Professor of Anatomy and Surgery at Jefferson Medical College. He was a fine operator and devised a number of new surgical operations and instruments. This was work contains 80 fine lithographed plates, and among its important contributions was the first extensive section on plastic surgery in an American surgical textbook. A relatively small number of copies were issued with the plates colored by hand. See No. 5746.2.

Pancoast performed the first successful operation for exstrophy of the bladder (ectopia vesicae).

Pancoast devised the operative procedure of sectioning the second and third branches of the fifth pair of nerves as they emerge from the base of the brain. Reported by F. Woodbury.