Tattooing in the 1850's - Not Pretty

I found a description of how tattoos were done back in the day in a paper on JStor called "The Tattoos of Early American Seafarers" by Ira Dye. Enjoy. (note: I added the paragraph breaks) "The French forensic scientist, Hutin ... in the early 1850's ... described the usual process in great detail. The design was traced on the person to be tattooed with a pen or pencil. Coloring materials, apparently nearly always Indian or Chinese Ink (lampblack mixed with animal glue, sold in solid rolls or cakes), laundry bluing, or vermilion (artificial cin-nabar, i.e., alpha mercuric sulfide, ground with white wine and then mixed with white of egg), were prepared with a little water or saliva in small cups or shells. The tattooing instrument was formed by tying two, three or four needles together. The tattooist stretched the subject's skin as tight as possible in the area to be worked on, then dipped the needle bundle into the coloring matter and, holding it at right angles to the skin surface, pricked the points deeply enough to carry the coloring matter into the dermis, below the epidermis. This was repeated until the design was completed or the subject could no longer stand the pain. After the session was completed, the blood and excess coloring matter was washed off the subject's skin, sometimes with water, sometimes with urine (probably in the belief that it served as a fixative), and some-times with rum or brandy. Any rum or brandy left over was apparently a perquisite of the tattooist. Sometimes the coloring matter used was wet gunpowder and ink, which would be rubbed into the needle marks." Crazy! Saliva? Urine! Dye adds: "To modern eyes, these practices appear dangerously unsanitary. While there is no description of an American seafarer of the period suffering serious infection or disease from tattooing, there is plenty of evidence that others who were tattooed by using the common process of that time and later were afflicted with gangrene, syphilis, leprosy, and/ or viral hepatitis, among other things." You know what I think? EW!! Sometimes the old way isn't necessarily the best way. Miss.C