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SCIENCE TEACHING IN GFSECE Following the World War, when the Balkan States were still warm from the struggle, Turkey required the Greeks and Armenians living within her territory to leave for other countries. Many foreign schools were compelled t o close or leave and chief among these was the well-founded and fast-growing Anatolia College of Merzifoun. This college followed the refugees t o Greece and relocated in Salonica, a city of growing importance upon the Aegean Sea. Like all of the refugees this college left behind in Turkey much that is required for maintenance. All that Dr. White, the President, could bring with him was the hope for a new and better school. For two and a half years the college has been growing and now faces a future of prosperity. Last year I left America t o join the college staff with the desire to establish a department of sciences. In its former home the college had a well-defined course of science, but in its new home such was not the case. Last year we had no laboratories whatsoever, but this year we have a biology laboratory and a physics laboratory. Next year we shall include chemistry in our course of study, which means we will build a chemistry laboratory. When I arrived in Salonica, not being acquainted with the language or the people, I found i t practically impossible to build a laboratory. This past summer, however, I started upon the project. I n my attempt to snpply the needs for biology and physics I encountered scores of difficulties. I n the first place buying supplies from the natives was very difficult. The custom of bargaining, which may work perfectly well for the purchase of cloth or beads does not work so well for the purchase of physical apparatus. When we purchase material in America, we need only select our material by number or name from a catalogue, mail our order and within a short time we have just what we ordered-chemicals, in welllabeled packages. Such is not the case in Greece. The merchant usually does not have what you want t o begin with and tries to sell you something else. For example, I wished a small bottle of mercury bichloride. I went t o a wholesale pharmacy supply house, one of the largest in the city and placed my order. The clerk promptly sought my chemical, and after half an hour appeared from the depths of his store with a dusty bottle of what he called "sublimatum." The bottle contained a label in French stating that the contents were "calomel." When I refused the material the clerk replied with the characteristic answer, "Why?' When I insisted
i t was not bichloride, he frantically delivered an essay or Greek declamation probably passed down from Demosthenes, upon the fact that sublimatum and calomel were the same. This difficulty in purchasing supplies nearly gives one gray hairs, especially when one thinks of the dangers arising in the compounding of prescriptions for medicines. I had occasion to take treatment for malaria. Included in this treatment, the prescription called for a daily dose of arsenate of iron and mercury, a formula made up by a local druggist. Upon investigating I found that his methods of compounding were accurate enough but he took such precautions as to leave his stock bottles of arsenic uncovered, because he had a t some time broken the stopper, and the result was that his arsenic compound was fast oxidizing. I stopped the treatment right away and fortunately the malaria cleared up. In an attempt to discover blue-print paper, I was finally forced to make some. I tried to purchase potassium ferricyanide, and a t every attempt I received potassium ferrocyanide. After giving up the idea of using blue-print paper, I finally found a store which boasted of selling the material. Because of the fact that in early days somebody spread sand upon paper, wrote upon it and later reproduced the writing, blueprint paper is technically known as "sand writing paper." I have been constructing a weather bureau with the hope of obtaining data which will give some light upon approaching rain or wind storms as quite frequently Salonica is subjected to strenuous wind storms of three days' duration, known as Vardars because they sweep along the Vardar River valley. I searched the city from one end to the other and nowhere could I find a mercurial barometer. Aneroid barometers are to be had in any number but no two of them agree with each other. I tried to make a barometer and in the whole city of Salonica (and Salonica has a population of over 500,000) I could not find a single piece of glass tubing suitable for making a barometer. The only tubing available was a piece of soft glass tubing which, when heated to the melting point, became porous due to the formation of minute bubbles of gas. In a marine store I found several pieces of steam boiler water-gauge tubing. The inadequacy of supplies and the willingness to sell one thing for another are not the only setbacks one faces in establishing science courses. Governmental laws, high duties, and illogical ideas are others. Greece is awakening to the realization of modernism and she is trying to use modern methods. Her former, out-of-date methods are so embedded into ber life that modernism is finding it very difficult to gather headway. Salonica is growing rapidly and old, poorly, constructed buildings and streets are giving away to newer ones. Within the past two years thousands of large buildings have been erected, and curious is the resultant of
