variolation

IPA: vˈɛriʌɫˈeɪʃʌn

(historical) The inoculation of a person with smallpox with the intention of inducing a mild form of the illness and subsequent immunity to the disease.

Examples of "variolation" in Sentences

Using the disease to directly infect a person is called variolation, with the intent of resisting the same disease later.
Determined not to repeat the mistakes of Quebec, Washington spent much of 1776 torn about whether to require variolation for new conscripts.
Inoculation, hereafter referred to as variolation, was likely practiced in Africa, India, and China long before the 18th century, when it was introduced to Europe.
As the virus existed possibly as far back as 1000 BCE, and as the first attempts at vaccination called variolation were in the 10th century, to claim that the colonists didn't understand the disease and didn't know what they were doing...
By the time the United States Constitution was adopted in Philadelphia in 1787, the benefits of inoculation were clear: When naturally occurring, smallpox was lethal up to a third of the time; when the result of variolation, that ratio dropped to under 2 percent.8 At the time, there was only a vague understanding of precisely why inoculation was so effective.
Contrary to Montagu’s enthusiastic claim, however, inoculation—which was also known as variolation, in honor of the disease it sought to combat—did not render smallpox entirely harmless: Inoculees still got sick; that, after all, was the whole point of undergoing the procedure in the first place, since a bout of smallpox was the only known way to achieve lifelong immunity.