Posts Tagged ‘bmj’
Cello scrotum? What?
In December 2008, the British Medical Journal (BMJ) published a literature review, by Drs Sarah Bache and Frank Edenborough, of the numerous health problems and injuries associated with making music.
Under the subhead of “Dermatological conditions”, they included references to various conditions such as guitarist’s nipple, cellist’s chest, cello knee and — get this — cello scrotum.
Every cello player is aware that even the most vigorous playing style would still never be able to cause such an awkward injury. Indeed, Elaine Murphy, the senior doctor who first posited the condition in 1974, has ‘fessed up in a subsequent letter to the editor:
Perhaps after 34 years it’s time for us to confess that we invented cello scrotum.
Reading Curtis’s 1974 letter to the BMJ on guitar nipple, we thought it highly likely to be a spoof and decided to go one further by submitting a letter pretending to have noted a similar phenomenon in cellists, signed by the non-doctor one of us (JMM). Anyone who has ever watched a cello being played would realise the physical impossibility of our claim.
I guess this guy will be less worried now!