Have you ever blessed or good wishes to someone who has sneezed? People say bless you so frequently it is now thought of more as good etiquette than as a superstitious practice. But this bit of etiquette actually started as a superstition. Before people understood how germs work they believed that evil spirits were responsible for sickness. In the 6th century people believed that the soul flew out of the body briefly when a person sneezed. They believed that saying bless you would protect the person from being entered by evil spirits while the soul was gone. This practice actually became law in Europe in the 1300s during the Great Plague During this time of the deadly infectious disease the pope made it a requirement for people to bless anyone who sneezed. The reason is that sneezing was a sign of having caught the plague, so a sneezing person was likely to be n danger of dying from the plague.