LXVIII. Some fix the custom of saluting and praying for a blessing on those who sneeze, to have commenced in the reign of St. Gregory, in whose time Rome was visited with a melancholy pestilence, of which a sneeze was the fatal crisis, as immediately after that the patient died; and that the holy pontif ordained, that this salutation and blessing should be established as a remedy to avert the evil; and from thence this benediction and praying for the preservation of any one who sneezed came to be in use ever afterwards. This tradition, although generally received, is evidently fabulous. We are told by Aristotle, that in his time it was the common practice to bless people when they sneezed. In his Problems, sect. xxxiii. quæst. 7. and 9. he enquires into the cause of this custom, and accounts for it in the following manner: that sneezing is an indication that the head, which is the noblest and most sacred part of a man, is well disposed and in good order; on which account people reverence sneezing: _Perinde igitur, quasi bonæ indicium valetudinis partis optimæ, atque sacerimæ, sternutamentum adorant beneque augurantur._ This matter was treated of in the Academy Royal of Inscriptions, where they produced testimonies, that not only among the Greeks and Romans this was a common practice, but that the Spaniards upon their first discovery of the New World, found it established there also. Mons. Morin, a Member of that Academy, tells us, that the common tradition which at present prevails, with respect to the origin of these salutations, was produced by another fabulous tradition of much greater antiquity. This was that of the Rabbins, quoted in the Talmudic Lexicon of Buxtorf; which says, that God, at the beginning of the world, established it as a general law, that men should never sneeze more than once, and that immediately after it they should die; that things went uniformly on in this way, without varying in a single instance, till the days of the patriarch Jacob; who, in a second struggle he had with God, obtained the revocation of this law; and that all the princes of the world, upon being informed of this event, ordained, that their subjects in future, should accompany the act of sneezing with words of thanksgiving and prayers for health. Our tradition bears such an analogy to the rabbinical one, that although it is not quite so extravagant, it seems probable, that the first fable begat the second. SECT. XXXII. _Queen Brunequilda._