Published on 12, July, 2020
Anyone else get mildly irritated when people say "Bless you!" after you sneeze?
For me, it's "Great! Not only was I interrupted by having to sneeze, now you've added the obligation to say 'Thank you' to my troubles!". Also, can we drop the ritualised superstition given that the year starts with a 20?
indeed that nursery ryhme was written over a hundred years or so after the plague plus the second part makes no sense to the plague
Cows in the meadows Eating buttercups A-tishoo! A-tishoo! We all jump up.
Religion is the biggest con in the world it was invented to control the masses.... you must pay homage to god and give weekly donations to the church you must follow our rules otherwise you will go to hell and be dammed for all eternity etc etc complete and utter tosh though its nice to see that grip is failing less and less people believe and in my opinion about time as its all about greed i mean look at the catholic church ie the vatican preech about gods love etc and how jesus cast out the money lenders etc so how come the vatican is so rich ? it's literally worth billions if they were so committed to the principles they preach why not use that money to help the poor ????
Sorry I got really into a documentary series on the plague a couple of years ago. I should probably be quiet now
Ah but the rats carried the fleas To be fair, although the plague fleas are usually carried by rodents, more than 200 animals can and do catch plague and carry plague fleas including domestic cats and dogs, usually when a large number of rats have been killed by the plague and the infected fleas are looking for other sources of food
There was a story that that was the case but it was apparently proved untrue.
Yes. It makes so many weird assumptions.
This is why people take the German approach and say 'Gesundheit'. It just means 'health', so although it's equally ineffectual, it makes some kind of sense.
I've heard this too. Thought it was such an innocent game we played as children and then discovered we were singing about people dropping down dead.
I wonder whether it really originated from there or whether that is an extremely well spread rumour, as said above, the sneezing doesn't really fit in as being associated with the plague.
And then when it doesn't happen, kind of like atch...atch.... atch..... and then nothing no atchooooo ah thats better, and if so thats really annoying.
Haha I know what you mean about the nosegasm :-).
Apparently thats where the kids game ring a ring o roses a pocket full of posies A-tishoo A-tishoo we all fall down, comes from as well durring the time of the plague.
I love a good sneeze, its sort of like an orgasm for the nose! So yes having to say thankyou kind of takes some of the enjoyment out of it so I can think why you might get annoyed. Its not the rats that caused the plague either it was the fĺeas xarrying the bacteria. POOR Rats always get the blame for everything.
far from it kitsun you quite rightly correct me to say it wasn't pnuemonic was incorrect what i meant was sneezing wasn't a side effect associated with the plague definitely not your bad more a case of we were neither wrong nor right but somewhere in between
To be fair actually thinking about it (rather than relying on myths) the bacteria that causes the plague, Yersinia Pestis causes 3 types of plague, bubonic; septicaemic and pneumonic, decided by the bacteria’s mode of entry to the body. While the pneumonic version would definitely have caused coughing it probably wouldn’t have caused sneezing so you were probably right about the origins of the term ‘bless you’. My bad!
We may never know it’s exact origin due to the time lapse but somewhere in the Middle Ages sounds good.
you could be right its hard to know for sure after so long though im pretty sure i read that in a history book plus the bubonic plague wasn't really pnuemonic it was more of a fever sepsis vomitous kind of disease so coughing wasn't really a big part of it generally
Really? I thought the obligation to say ‘bless you’ when someone sneezes started during the plague when if someone sneezed they probably had caught the plague so you said ‘bless you’ to them as they were going to die shortly.
the "bless you" stems from the middle ages belief that when you sneezed you were vunerable to the devil entering you and as with many sayings its just become common although to be honest i haven't heard it said in a long time since modern society is falling out of favour with religion