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Article
September 1990

Chaos: To See a World in a Grain of Sand and a Heaven in a Wild Flower

Author Affiliations

Department of Dermatology University of Rochester 601 Elmwood Ave, Box 697 Rochester, NY 14642

Arch Dermatol. 1990;126(9):1159-1160. doi:10.1001/archderm.1990.01670330039003
Abstract

Chaos is almost as old as time. An early creation myth says, "Darkness was first, and from Darkness sprang Chaos. From the union between Darkness and Chaos sprang Night, Day, Erebus, and the air."1 As discussed by Bulfinch,2 "before earth and sea and heaven were created, all things wore one aspect, to which we give the name Chaos—a confused and shapeless mass, nothing but dead weight, in which however, slumbered the seeds of things." After this beginning we end up in our modern world with a new chaos engendered by new deities: HIFCA, DRG, HMO, IPA, and RVS. Mankind has "gressed" (a neologism, derived from progressed and retrogressed, implying movement with the inability to interpret whether the direction has been forward or backward) from Olympian gods with proper names to our current state in which the gods are so powerful that one must use their acronyms. The true

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