Bless you (after a sneeze)

The original expression is thought to be God bless you and the practice of blessing someone after a sneeze has been around for a long time, in the Christian era from at least 500 AD. A sneeze was very often the early sign of an illness, sometimes minor but very often much more serious, such as influenza, plague etc. There is evidence that the custom of invoking a blessing after a sneeze might even be very much older because some ancient cultures believed a sneeze temporarily separated body from soul. The blessing in this case was to restore the union.