A pretty obscure question, really I'm both interested to know and trying to ask a question that arose in my head to do with artificial light sources. This post taught me all about how modern lighting has changed our sleep cycle, and this quote made me wonder if perhaps modern lighting has something to do with the phenomenon of sneezing when exposed to bright lights.
When modern lighting was invented the enormous physiological impact of it - and it's absence - was widely agreed upon by contemporary scientists. Charles A. Czeisler, chronobiologist, commented "we are inadvertently taking a drug that affects how we sleep".
Another curiosity of mine is simply that I wonder how far back it may have been that people first noticed and documented the phenomenon.
I've read that Aristotle mentions the phenomenon in The Book of Problems, “Why does the heat of the sun provoke sneezing?” This refers to the sun, rather than artificial lights.
Perhaps the first reference to artificial lights is from Sédan , J. (1954) -"Réflexe photosternutatoire", Revue oto-neuro-ophtalmologique, 26 :123-126, as the case studies are of subjects exposed to ophthalmology slit lamps.