Among her many projects, she organized the reforestation of the slopes of Mount Hymettus with its centre at the Monastery of Kaissariani and, under her guidance, the monastery itself was beautifully restored and the gardens surrounding it landscaped. Today the spot is one of the most attractive and popular areas around Athens. She was largely responsible for the restoration of the Monastery of Saint John the Hunter (also on Mount Hymettus) and for the landscaping of the area around the Temple of Olympian Zeus. Author of many books on folklore and nature (some of which were written in English and are still available), she also published a magazine named Nature and Life. In recent years she devoted much of her energy to discouraging the wanton chopping down of evergreens at Christmas. Emphasizing that the Christmas Tree is not a Greek custom, she sought to revive traditions native to Greece, such as decorating ship models during the Yule season. She organized exhibitions which aroused in children an interest in such customs.
For many years a popular and well-known figure to the foreign community, Kaiti Argyropoulou played an important role in drawing international interest and participation to the cause of Greek conservation.
The Kos Water Epic
ON February 8 a local newspaper announced in dazzling headlines that a miraculous water, discovered by George Kamateros on the island of Kos, was a fool-proof cure for cancer. This elixir, dubbed ‘helion’, was described as ‘the water of God’. From that day on such merely profane matters as entry into the EEC, negotiations on the future of NATO bases, the Cypriot talks, and even further CIA revelations were temporarily relegated to small print on back pages as the press, with pious fervour, discussed and weighed the properties of the new wonder drug.
At a press conference led by Constantine Gratsos — a compatriot of Kamateros and the major spokesman for the so-called ‘Group of Twelve’ who have dedicated themselves to the promotion of helion — it was noted that Mr. Gratsos sported a gold cigarette lighter. That an ardent adherent of helion should smoke—and even chain smoke—seemed merely further evidence of his complete faith in the sacred water. That the lighter was emblazoned with a crown, however, aroused considerable comment. Thus, a matter that might seem to be the sole and proper concern of doctors and theologians took on a political colouring.
It was soon revealed that the alleged potency of helion has been known for the last three-and-a-half years, and that hundreds who had taken it had been, it was claimed, cured of cancer in the last six months. Most curious of all was the revelation that those first cured had all been royalists and that, from the start, ex-Queen Mother Frederika had been warmly enthusiastic about helion.
On February 12, the Bureau of Social Services gave helion a cautious acknowledgment on the basis of the testimony of former patients who declared that it had restored them to health. On the following day Mr. Gratsos’s home on Kanaris Street, just off Kolonaki Square, was inundated by hopeful patients asking for samples of the water. As was his usual practice, Mr. Gratsos gave these out gratis. On the following day, it was again distributed free of charge at Agia Sophia Church in Neo Psychiko in response to another large public gathering.
Meanwhile, the ranks of the skeptics began to swell. The director of the Cancer Research Hospital of Saint Sawas proclaimed that ‘the helion cure’ was pure charlatanism. Several other medical experts publicly doubted if the water had any therapeutic value, and samples were dispatched to the Democritos Atomic Research Centre in Athens, and to science laboratories in Italy, Germany and the U.S. for thorough testing.
The earliest results of these preliminary tests, however, were confusing as the content of each sample was different: some were said to be no different from most ordinary drinking water while others were said to have a considerable cobalt and nickel content. What was tested where and when remains a mystery and there seems to have been very little co-ordination between the testing laboratories. Later in the month, responsible members of the medical profession began suggesting that a moratorium be declared on the distribution of helion until exhaustive tests had been made, studied and collected. The Government, however, only repeated what it had said before, warning those who took the water that they should by no means give up other therapy.
For two weeks the matter died down a bit. Then, on March 13, Pitsa Kalpatsoglou, Professor of Medicine at the Marika Eliadi Hospital, announced that doses of helion given to female mice suffering from cancer produced a positive response. The growth of existing tumors, she announced, was halted and no other tumors had appeared. So, helion rushed back onto the front pages, this time in a wider context, when actor Nikos Stavridis announced that helion had cured him of cataracts and Parkinson’s disease, thus seeming to confirm what Mr. Kamateros had claimed originally, that helion could cure anything. The water appears to have been particularly beneficial in the theatre world as other stage figures began praising “the new wonder drug—in the full glare of publicity.
In all the excitement there were bound to be some mishaps such as when somebody’s sample of helion, left in the sun, exploded, and a man was run over by a helion tank truck in Vrilissia.
By the third week of March, the Helion Affair had reached tidal wave proportions and there was such a run on the water that houseware shops were running short of plastic water containers. At this point, helion’s discoverer, George Kamateros, gave a startling three-page interview to a leading weekly magazine which devoted nine full pages of a single issue to the matter of helion. Mr. Kamateros, who often speaks in parables,has an elliptical way of expressing himself. (He is deeply influenced, he says, by his three favourite literary masterpieces: The Gospel of St. John, Revelations and Queen Frederika’s A Measure of Understanding.) Part of his interview went very much like this, ‘I am going to open a patsatzidiko (tripe shop) in Constantinople. How am I to do this? To have land in Constantinople I must either become a Turk — which is out of the question, as I am devoted to Orthodoxy—or Constantinople must become Greek. How is Constantinople to become Greek? When President Ford comes to me to get cured, I will say, very well, but first I want a signed international agreement that we get back Saint Sophia.’
According to official reports, the American President is fit as a fiddle. It is an election year, however, and there is no doubt that it is an exhausting business. So one must consider the possibility of President Ford’s stopping by here between primaries for a restorative dose of helion, and agreeing to Mr. Kamateros’s proposal. In this case, Istanbul will be the mightiest city overcome by water since the Biblical deluge.
On March 22, at yet another press conference — duly recorded on the front pages of the newspapers — Mr. Kamateros announced that, thanks to the waters, we will be in Istanbul-Constantinople by May 29, that one bottle of helion will disperse the Turkish army, and that an island in the Aegean will be blown up to demonstrate the power of helion. (This suggests an interesting new theory for the destruction of Santorini to archaeologists who should be thankful to Mr. Kamateros. A few days earlier he had reassured them that he would see to the preservation of all our ancient monuments.) And so the Kos Water Affair continues on its mad course.
Numismatic Neurosis
THE reason that Athenians standing in front of kiosks are staring at their hands these days is not due to a sudden fad in palmistry. Nor is the look of alarm on their countenances due to the sudden discovery of a broken life line. They are simply bewildered by the latest series of newly-minted coins. In the last seventeen years, over thirty different coins have been issued for nine denominations in ten different sizes — sometimes varying only by a hair’s breadth — constituting a dizzying collection of small and jumbo ten drachmas, medium and small twenty drachmas, and several sizes of five drachmas. (The smallest denominations come not only in several sizes, but in a choice of silver or gold colours.)
As Greece has passed through monarchy, tyranny, oligarchy and what not in the last decade, each form of government has immortalized its reign by minting its own coins — and the result is pocket-anarchy. Our pockets and purses jangle with an extraordinary assortment of ancient celebrities, Glucksburg monarchs, revolutionary heroes, phoenixes, crossed guns, revolving atoms, owls, olive wreaths, grape clusters, winged horses, frigates, Olym-pian deities and assorted monuments.
In our latest series, the once noble five drachma talliro (recalling the day when the drachma was five to the dollar) has been ignominiously reduced in weight to approximately that of the old twenty lepta ‘doughnut’ (without the hole in the middle, however) and in size to that of the old two drachma piece. Although it sports Aristotle on its ‘heads’ side, the reverse is branded with a prosaic number five. (Fortunately, the late King Paul, who adorned an older series, was beardless and balding; otherwise he would be indistinguishable, after a bit of wear, from Aristotle.) The new ten drachma coin is a Democritos- headed and gyrating-atom-tailed piece. One of its predecessors was a particularly flighty junta number with Pegasus on one side and the phoenix on the other which invited the curiosity of numismatists for being ‘headless’ — and, needless to say, snide comments from citizens who drew other significance from it. Finally, the latest twenty drachma piece has Pericles on the ‘heads’ side and the Temple of Nike on the ‘tails’ side. Although he has not yet rated coinage, we are eagerly awaiting a Socrates piece, backed, no doubt, by a vial of hemlock.
It is said that the Ministry of Finance plans to recall all earlier coins, which should interest collectors. Meanwhile, whether buying a chocolate, a stamp, or a tube of toothpaste, one must rifle through images of at least two thousand years of history before one can pay for his purchases — ever fearful of cheating or being cheated. It should give the expected four million summer tourists a run for their money.
