_Origin of Salutation upon Sneezing._
LXVIII. Some fix the custom of saluting and praying for a blessing on
those who sneeze, to have commenced in the reign of St. Gregory, in
whose time Rome was visited with a melancholy pestilence, of which a
sneeze was the fatal crisis, as immediately after that the patient died;
and that the holy pontif ordained, that this salutation and blessing
should be established as a remedy to avert the evil; and from thence
this benediction and praying for the preservation of any one who sneezed
came to be in use ever afterwards. This tradition, although generally
received, is evidently fabulous. We are told by Aristotle, that in his
time it was the common practice to bless people when they sneezed.
In his Problems, sect. xxxiii. quæst. 7. and 9. he enquires into the
cause of this custom, and accounts for it in the following manner: that
sneezing is an indication that the head, which is the noblest and most
sacred part of a man, is well disposed and in good order; on which
account people reverence sneezing: _Perinde igitur, quasi bonæ indicium
valetudinis partis optimæ, atque sacerimæ, sternutamentum adorant
beneque augurantur._ This matter was treated of in the Academy Royal of
Inscriptions, where they produced testimonies, that not only among the
Greeks and Romans this was a common practice, but that the Spaniards
upon their first discovery of the New World, found it established there
also. Mons. Morin, a Member of that Academy, tells us, that the common
tradition which at present prevails, with respect to the origin of
these salutations, was produced by another fabulous tradition of much
greater antiquity. This was that of the Rabbins, quoted in the Talmudic
Lexicon of Buxtorf; which says, that God, at the beginning of the world,
established it as a general law, that men should never sneeze more than
once, and that immediately after it they should die; that things went
uniformly on in this way, without varying in a single instance, till
the days of the patriarch Jacob; who, in a second struggle he had with
God, obtained the revocation of this law; and that all the princes of
the world, upon being informed of this event, ordained, that their
subjects in future, should accompany the act of sneezing with words of
thanksgiving and prayers for health. Our tradition bears such an analogy
to the rabbinical one, that although it is not quite so extravagant, it
seems probable, that the first fable begat the second.