Exposed: the myth of cello scrotum

Peer who fooled the medical world with a letter to the British Medical Journal in 1974 finally comes clean

By Jeremy Laurance, Health Editor

Wednesday, 28 January 2009

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Cellist Yo Yo Ma will be pleased to learn Baroness Murphy's condition is fake

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A scandal involving a member of the House of Lords is exposed today – but this one occurred 34 years ago and the only harm caused was to anyone lacking a sense of humour.

Baroness Elaine Murphy, a cross-bench peer and former Professor of Psychiatry at Guy's Hospital, has confessed to manufacturing a medical condition which only existed in her imagination.

In a letter to the British Medical Journal published in 1974, the young Dr Murphy claimed to have discovered "cello scrotum", a painful affliction which only affected male players of the instrument.

The spoof letter was written in response to an earlier one about "guitar nipple" from a Dr P Curtis, which the young Dr Murphy thought likely also to be a spoof. To disguise her identity she persuaded her former husband, John Murphy, now chairman of St Peter's Brewery, Suffolk, to sign the letter, although he was a theoretical chemist, not a medical doctor.

Their secret was kept for more than three decades until a researcher writing in the 2008 Christmas issue of the BMJ cited cello scrotum among the health problems of musicians in an article entitled "A symphony of maladies".

In a letter to the BMJ published today, the Baroness and her co-conspirator said the citation of their "discovery" in the Christmas BMJ prompted them to confess to their youthful prank.

"Reading Curtis' letter on guitar nipple, we thought it highly likely to be a spoof and decided to go one further by pretending to have noticed a similar phenomenon in cellists. Anyone who has ever watched a cello being played would realise the physical impossibility of our claim," they write.

Despite this, and to their astonishment, the original letter was published by the presumably musically illiterate then letters editor of the BMJ. The mystery deepened when, the following Christmas, the Murphys sent a card to Dr Curtis addressed to "The inventor of guitar nipple from the discoverers of cello scrotum."

It turned out that Dr Curtis knew nothing about the condition he had supposedly identified – "another joke, we suspect", they write.

Their letter continues: "We have been dining out on this ever since. We were thrilled once more to be quoted in "A symphony of maladies". The BMJ has dubbed the episode "Scrotumgate" in a tribute to the political scandal that had engulfed Washington DC the previous year.

Baroness Murphy had a distinguished 25-year career as a doctor and academic in the NHS before moving into NHS management. She has been chair of the North East London Strategic Health Authority and is chair of council at St George's, University of London.

She was made a life peer in 2004 and speaks mainly on mental health, education, healthcare and ageing issues. She has remarried and lives in Norfolk.

Fiona Godlee, editor of the BMJ, said: "It seems the BMJ has been deliciously hoaxed. It is wonderful it has been going all these years and no one realised. We frown on misconduct and medical fraud is taken very seriously. But in this case I hope I am right in saying that no harm has been done." The letter is illustrated by a cartoon of a naked cellist in pain – caused by his instrument, or by being the butt of a 34-year-old jape.

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Comments

( Leave a comment )

guitare nipple and cello scrutum, but let us not forget

kellnergram wrote:

Wednesday, 28 January 2009 at 01:33 am (UTC)

Here in Canada, my uncle, Dr Serge Guy la Flowers of Coaldale Alberta in the 1950s discovered the rather painful condition call Harp Clit, which only affects female harp players. Apparently, when plucking some of the high tension high frequency notes the pressure against certain highly sensitive regions of the female genetalia is quite pronounced. This is fine for, say, the first 3 or 4 rehearsals of the Richard Strauss harp concerto, indeed there is a certain exhilaration to those early rehearsals that may not be strictly associated with the challenges of the piece, but can result in rather a degree of gential fatigue by performance time.

My uncle's report, however, was covered up by the prudery of the Alberta Medical Association in the 1950s and so has never been given the full respect it deserves. I note, however, that since the release of the Flowers' Harp Clit thesis there has been a drastic decline in the number of harp players in the southern Alberta region. Coincidence? I think not.

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Musician heal thyself

comradekaff wrote:

Wednesday, 28 January 2009 at 06:45 am (UTC)

The main problem affecting male musicians these days is the "blind audition" where by women get selected t to join orchestras, and male postulants are left to pluck and puff on their own.

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Sym phoneys

peemur wrote:

Wednesday, 28 January 2009 at 08:31 am (UTC)

One would think that violinists would be the ones most prone to repetitive strain injury due to the contrived way they must hold their instrument with their neck. Clearly size matters when it comes to susceptability of the musician. On the other hand, it's not the size of your bow that matters, but how you string it. subsonic resonances propagating through sensitive organs have been applied therapeutically for years, so why would this condition not have some beneficial side effects?

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"Rock Cock"

colin_morris wrote:

Wednesday, 28 January 2009 at 10:00 am (UTC)

A medic friend of mine once described to me a similar affliction that purveyors of Heavy Metal frequently suffer from. The entire band "members" and indeed thier music become swollen, overblown and very painful. It has been identified as "Cock Rock" when applied to the music and "Rock Cock" when applied to the musicians.
Have we exhausted this concept yet?

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