“Bless You”
Many people have
become accustomed to saying "bless you" or "gesundheit"
when someone sneezes. No one says anything when someone coughs, blows their
nose or burps, so why do sneezes get special treatment? The Romans would say "Jupiter preserves
you" or "Salve," which meant "good health to you," and
the Greeks would wish each other "long life." With the first mention
of the habit of acknowledging a sneeze dating to the writings of Pliny the
Elder in 77AD. The phrase "God bless you" is attributed to Pope Gregory
the Great who uttered it in the sixth century during a bubonic plague epidemic
(sneezing is an obvious symptom of one form of the plague).
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