In his book, "The French Imperial Guard - Part 5", Andre Jouineau shows an illustration of this coat. He says it is in the Military Museum at Delft (Holland) and that it belonged to a Dutch Surgeon 3rd Class who took part in the Russian Campaign. The uniform is brown with crimson velvet facings and buttons of the Guard Medical Services. According to Jouineau the crimson velvet facings would be correct for a surgeon but the brown cloth of the uniform is unusual.

The line medical attendants wore a brown uniform with red facings and this would have made them distinctive on the battlefield. It makes military sense to have medical personnel distinguished in some way. According to most sorces, including Jouineau himself in this same book, the Imperial Guard medical attendants wore the standard blue/grey uniform of the Imperial Guard Administration Workers Battalion (Bataillon d'Ouvriers d'Administration). If this was so the Imperial Guard medical attendants would have been indistinguishable from other members of this battalion with duties of bakers, butchers and storemen.

I wondered whether the fact that a Guard surgeon apparently had a brown uniform might be an indication that Guard medical attendants also used this colour in the field, or am I reading too much into it?

Rod