Some have offered an explanation suggesting that people once held the folk belief that a person's soul could be thrown from their body when they sneezed,Snopes Urban Legends – Bless You! that sneezing otherwise opened the body to invasion by the Devil or evil spirits,Ed Zotti, Editor. Why Do We Say "God Bless You" After a Sneeze?, Straight Dope, 27 September 2001. or that sneezing was the body's effort to force out an invading evil presence. In these cases, "God bless you" or "bless you" is used as a sort of shield against evil. The Irish Folk story "Master and Man" by Thomas Crofton Croker, collected by William Butler Yeats, describes this variation. Moreover, in the past some people may have thought that the heart stops beating during a sneeze, and that the phrase "God bless you" encourages the heart to continue beating.Madsci.org, Mad Scientist posting by Tom Wilson, M.D./PhD, Pathology, Div. of Molecular Oncology, Washington University School of Medicine
