THE ART OF SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATION 



newly discovered principle or technique to the different problem, 

 some new knowledge does arise. 



Transfer is one of the principal means by which science evolves. 

 Most discoveries have applications in fields other than those in 

 which they are made and when applied to these new fields they 

 are often instrumental in bringing about further discoveries. 

 Major scientific achievements have sometimes come from transfer. 

 Lister's development of antiseptic surgery was largely a transfer 

 of Pasteur's work showing that decomposition was due to 

 bacteria. 



It might be thought that as soon as a discovery is announced, 

 all its possible applications in other fields follow almost im- 

 mediately and automatically, but this is seldom so. Scientists some- 

 times fail to realise the significance which a new discovery in 

 another field may have for their own work, or if they do realise it 

 they may not succeed in discovering the necessary modifications. 

 Years elapsed between the discovery of most of the principles of 

 bacteriology and immunology and all their applications to various 

 diseases. It was some time before the principle of haemagglutina- 

 tion by viruses, discovered by Hirst with influenza virus, was 

 found to hold with several other viruses, however with modifica- 

 tions in some instances, as one might have expected, and still later 

 it has been extended to certain bacteria. 



An important form of the transfer method is the exploitation 

 of a new technique adopted from another branch of science. 

 Some workers deliberately take up a new technique and look for 

 problems in which its special virtues offer new openings. Partition 

 chromatography and haemagglutination have, for example, been 

 used in this way in fields far removed from those in which they 

 were first developed. 



The possibility of developments by the transfer method is 

 perhaps the main reason why the research man needs to keep 

 himself informed of at least the principal developments taking 

 place in more than his own narrow field of work. 



In this section we might also mention the scientific develop- 

 ments of customs and practices already in use without any 

 scientific background. A large number of drugs used in thera- 

 peutics came into use in this way. Quinine, cocaine, curare and 

 ephedrine were used long before they were studied scientifically 



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