Many people are used to saying “ bless you” or “ gesundheit” when someone sneezes. No one says anything when someone coughs or blows their nose, so why do sneezes get special treatment ?The phrase “ God bless you” belongs to Pope Gregory the Great, w ho voiced in in the sixth century during a bubonic plague epidemic(黑死病泛滥时期)(sneezing is an obvious sympton of one form of the plague) The term “gesundheirt” comes from Germany , and it literally means “health”. The idea is that a sneerze typically occurs before illness.