Page 3 - Program - White Coat September 2024

Lab coats were first worn by scientists in the late 1880s to protect their skin and clothing from the
substances they were working with in laboratories. Physicians dressed formally in the costume of
a professional gentleman: black frock coat, black pants, white shirt under a vest of black or a mut-
ed pattern crossed by a gold watch chain, and a black hat, tricorn or top hat, whatever was fashiona-
ble among gentlemen to wear out of doors. Dressed like this, a physician making call at their pa-
tients home inspired respect, perhaps trust and certainly obedience to his "orders" from his patients,
their families and household staff and nurses.

Prior to the latter decades of the 19th century, medical therapies were based more on tradition than
evidence. During the last years of the 19th century, however, scientific research in medicine made
tremendous progress. Germ theory of disease, for example, was proven. Medical education was
overhauled and rigorous curriculum, including research in laboratories and clinical experience was
added. Diploma mills closed and medical degrees were no longer obtainable strictly
through apprenticeships with established physicians.

To distinguish themselves from older physicians without academic credentials, graduates of diploma
mills, homeopaths and quacks who made money from selling concoctions and pieces of apparatus
which usually had no therapeutic value at all, physicians began to wear the white lab coat. It embod-
ied the new ideology of physicians as scientists and medicine based on sound scientific principles
and research. By 1915, the white coat was the norm, although for house calls, physicians still pre-
ferred to dress formally.

"Why do physicians wear lab coats?" / Andre Picard. Globe and Mail. July 2, 2012.