Talk:Variolation

Redundant articles on variolation/inoculation
This article may contain content identical or similar to another topic. Please see Talk:History of smallpox Mathglot (talk) 22:44, 24 March 2013 (UTC)


 * Agreed. As a new user, I'm certainly frustrated that the discussion of this subject is split between two parallel articles.  I understand that the original idea was to have Variolation to be the narrow article on smallpox only, and Inoculation be the broad article describing other uses of the technique (see this discussion) but it seems like that goal was not achieved.  I believe that we should either merge these two articles, integrating the content, or enforce the split as originally envisioned.  Either way, the history of the smallpox technique should be in one article, with appropriate summary and links in other articles. Hi-storian (talk) 19:30, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

Why did it work?
The article could benefit from a scientific section discussing why variolation had a different outcome from regular infection with the disease -- in terms of infection and response in the body, why was it that regular infection would produce a full-blown attack of smallpox, but variolation apparently did not? Jheald (talk) 09:41, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

This section does not actually disclose the difference between vaccination and variolation
It is important that material on Wikipedia on vaccination be informative and accurate.

Yet, this section does not actually say what the difference(s) between vaccination and variolation is / are. Is the difference (or one of them) that variolation involves administering material from the disease that one is trying to stop the patient from getting, whereas vaccination involves administering material from a slightly different disease? Or what?

PlacidGoldfish willThisDo (talk) 01:06, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

Variolation was the method of inoculation first used to immunize individuals against smallpox (Variola) with material taken from a patient or a recently variolated individual, in the hope that a mild, but protective, infection would result. Only 1–2% of those variolated died from the intentional infection compared to 30% who contracted smallpox naturally. Variolation is no longer used today. It was replaced by the smallpox vaccine, a safer alternative. This in turn led to the development of the many vaccines now available against other diseases. 86.3.140.217 (talk) 13:36, 23 May 2024 (UTC)