What did Victorian surgeons wear performing surgery? Were they clean or dirty?

I actually wrote a senior thesis on this back in high school. :D

During Victorian times, the more blood a surgeon had on his smock, the better. It was looked at sort of like a badge. They thought bad smells in the air were caused by miasma, and not by improper hygiene or rot.

It wasn't until Joseph Lister came on the scene that this slowly began to change. To some he was actually a laughing stock with his ideas of washing hands and sterilizing surgical equipment. Thankfully, his theories on germs became more widely accepted.

A British Institution of Preventive Medicine, previously named after Edward Jenner was renamed in 1899 in honor of Lister.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Lister

Also see the section labeled 'Infection' under this link:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surgery#Modern_surgery

The Victorian surgeons would wear old frock coats while perfomring surgery. And yes, they were extremely dirty and unsanitary. According to a contemporary, they frock coats were 'stiff and stinking with pus and blood'.

thegarret.org.uk/herrings.htm webpage no longer exists

As unbelievable notes, the frock coat was more or less the badge of 19th-century surgeons and other physicians in western countries. For those who are not familiar with this garment:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frock_coat

Here, in fact, is a painting of American surgeons operating in frock coats in 1875:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gross_Clinic

There is also the Victorian Surgical Revolution. By the 1880's this had changed.

By the 1880s, antiseptic surgery (or "Listerism") had transformed into aseptic surgery as knowledge about pathogenic bacteria accumulated. Surgeons now concentrated their efforts on excluding disease-causing bacteria from incisions and amputation sites by ensuring that their own hands had been thoroughly cleaned and their street clothes were covered by clean white gowns; later, they began to wear caps, masks, and rubber gloves.

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/304/5667/54

I didn't check every page of everyone's reference, but didn't quickly find that anyone has mentioned Ignaz Semmelweis. He was before his time in promoting cleanliness in the medical profession.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis

Frank Slaughter wrote a well-known biography of him in 1950 entitled, "Immortal Magyar: Semmelweis, Conqueror of Childbed Fever."

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=195128