Tattoos go back further in the Korean culture than we think. In our grandmothers’ generation, girls used a needle and ink to make three dots on their arm with their friends as a symbol of their friendship. A dot was drawn around the belly button in the hopes to alleviate stomachache. These actions are related to the desire to benefit from making a mark in the body for religious or practical purposes.
Ancient Egyptian records tell of tattoos used in the human body. However, the history of tattoo was found to be longer when archaeologists and geneticists estimated that the remains of “Oetzi the Ice Man,” discovered in the Alps in 1991, is over 5,300 years old. The Ice Man had 57 tattoos all over his body and their positions in the body coincided with the pain relief points in the modern medicine. This groundbreaking discovery indicated that ancient tattoos had medical functions. It supports the argument that tattoos have served both shamanistic and medical purposes (pain relief) in the ancient society.
The general interpretation is that the shamanistic aspect of tattoos encompasses the medical use, as well as the political tool by which the ruling class used to control the ruled class. Drinking a beverage or other arbitrary practices during the shamanistic ritual serves to rationalize and strengthen the ruling class’s authority by alleviating the fear (including fear of death) and dismay of the ruled class.
However, this is only guesswork and we need more concrete evidence to study the history of medical tattoo. Therefore, it would be appropriate to define[1] and find cases of medical tattoo in recent clinical practice.
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The term “medical tattoo” may sound strange because tattoos are not usually carried out in medical institutions and the public seems not to demand medical attention for tattoo treatments. It would be difficult for the Korean medical society to accept tattoos as a form of treatment when the public already see tattoos as a taboo. Therefore, it is natural to hold skeptical and negative views about tattoo.
-To be continued
[1] Current Definition of Medical Tattoo (The American Academy of Dermatology in 2004)
Medical tattoos are commonly used to delineate permanent landmarks for radiology therapy and are placed by a physician.
