Inoculation

(-ok-u-la's hun.) [From L. inoculatio, an in grafting.] (Bot.) A kind of grafting in the bud, as when the bud of one fruit-tree is set in the stock or branch of another, so as to make several sorts of fruit grow on the same tree. The time to inoculate is when the buds are formed at the extremities of the same year's shoot, indicating that the spring growth for that season is complete.-(Surg.) A proce which consists in inserting a variolous (or small-pox) pustule, taken after the beginning of the 8th day, in or beneath the skin of a person who has not previously suffered from the small-pox, so as to produce a similar disease, but simpler and le dangerous than ordinary small-pox. I. was known in Oriental countries at a very early period; but it was not till Lady Mary Wortley Montagu wrote her celebrated letter from Adrianople in 1717, that the operation became generally known in Europe. As being an almost certain means of preventing a subsequent attack of the ordinary disease, I. was much practised till the discovery of the anti variolous power of VACCINATION, q. v. [s. 485]