Legend of Culebrilla

Every day, the doña looked at its leg with concern. Besides the pain that invaded it, the concern resided in that they had told him/her that that red line that had in the right calf was no more, no less that the culebrilla (it is named this way because it is supposed that their infection comes from the step of a viper or snake on the clothes). Their neighbor had told it to him who had also been some years ago victim of this affection, but in her shoulder. They say that this eruption, with snake form, has a serious problem: if the queue and the head of the supposed snake unite, the person that has it dies. So every day, the doña looked at its leg and he/she did with concern how they came closer the tips.

All suggested him/her homemade formulas to kill that culebrilla. Somebody assured him/her that the better era to rub a toad on the culebrilla so that this absorbed the poison. Other they told him/her that he/she had to write with Chinese ink in both ends of the line the words "Jesús, María and José." They also recommended him/her another formula, perhaps of the good known ones that it consists on filling a vessel with some water and to take three paths, while the following sentence is recited three times a day during three days: "I went for a road, I met with San Pablo, he/she asked me what he/she had, I answered that it was culebrilla that with what would be treated. San Pablo Responded: with water of the font and path of... (name of the sick person)."

That that popularly is known as culebrilla it is an illness called Herpes zoster. It is about an acute infection that takes place for activation of latent virus of which most is carriers: Varicella-zoster or human Herpes virus 3 that it attacks to the ganglions of the sensitive later roots of the spinal ledges. This is the scientific explanation, and the one that can be in the books of Medicine. However, the history of the culebrilla that includes the possibility to die if they join "the queue and the head", it is a myth that accompanies for rituals, and it is taken as true of point that he/she repeats and he/she repeats. Many people that have suffered it, assure that the own physicians could not be treated it and yes the shamans. The culebrilla is one of those petty discords between the science and the tradition. But that it exists, it exists.