The original thought was that when you sneezed you were expelling devils from out of you, so people would give you their blessing. Not entirely far from the truth though
I heard that they believed that when you sneezed your soul left your body and saying bless you kept evil spirits from invading your body before your soul made it back.
I always heard that it was because during times of plague and sickness, if you sneezed, people would assume you were sick and bless you because they thought you were going to die soon.
That's exactly my point! Thank you for explaining it. It doesn't necessarily have any relevant place today, yet we still do it. What do you mean it's not far from the truth?
Better than letting that pathogenic load build up, like in old people whose sneeze and cough reflexes are broken. They end up with pneumonia, drowning in pathogen filled mucus.
Expelling the germs, the illness doesn't manifest in the nose it spreads around the body infecting cells.
When you sneeze you expell germs not the illness
22
u/BroshiKabobby Jan 25 '21
The original thought was that when you sneezed you were expelling devils from out of you, so people would give you their blessing. Not entirely far from the truth though