Types of Tattoos

In my earlier blog, I talked about how tattoos can serve as various functions. According to the American Dermatologist Academy, they distinguished five types of tattoos: traumatic tattoos, amateur and professional tattoos, cosmetic tattoos, identification tattoos, and identification tattoos.

Traumatic tattoos are often open wounds that accidentally came in contact with chemical materials such as coal dust, powder, graphite, pen ink, etc. and left with permanent discoloration on the scars.

Amateur and professional tattoos are tattoos that most people nowadays tend to get because they tend to resemble or symbolize something that is meaningful to us in one way or another. For example, people get tattoos for religion, pledges, indication of status, memorial purpose, and even criminal purposes.

Nowadays, a lot of female and males also receive cosmetic tattoos to enhance their appearance.

Medical tattoos are used to ensure instruments to be properly located, or to convey certain information about the patient.

Identification Tattoos (bottom)

United States:

After American Revolution (1765-1783), sailors used government protection papers to establish their American citizenship in order to avoid British Navy impressment. However, because the certificates were so general that a lot of impressment officers paid no attention to them. As a result, the official certificates started carrying information about the sailors' tattoos and scars to precisely identify the seamen.

Spindler wrote in his book The man in the ice that:

"In the past it was chiefly sailors who had themselves tattooed to ensure that, in the event of shipwreck, their bodies could be identified and would be given a Christian burial. Prostitutes sometimes use tattoos to indicate their profession. Prisoners use thematic tattoos to express their protest at the society which put them behind bars. As members of an elite male association, SS men identified themselves by having their blood group tattooed on the inside of the upper arm. In a corresponding measure concentration camp inmates, victims of the Nazis, had a number forcibly tattooed on their arms (170)."

The SS blood group tattoo was applied to all Waffen-SS members. The purpose of the tattoo was to identify a soldier's blood type in case of a blood transfusion was needed while unconscious. 

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tattoo
http://themissinginktattoo.weebly.com/types-of-tattoos.html
Spindler, K. (1994). The man in the ice. New York, NY: Harmony Press.