Back in the day people believed that a sneeze causes the soul to escape the body through the nose. Saying "bless you" would stop the devil from claiming the person's freed soul. Others believed the opposite: that evil spirits use the sneeze as an opportunity to enter a person's body. There was also the misconception that the heart momentarily stops during a sneeze (it doesn't), and that saying "bless you" was a way of welcoming the person back to life.
So now that science has proved that sneezing is a reflex action and is most often the sign of something relatively benign, why do we continue to say it??
Common courtesy be damned.....
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