1131 CELLO SCROTUM, 1974-2009

Abstract

You have accessJournal of UrologyHistory of Urology1 Apr 20101131 CELLO SCROTUM, 1974-2009 Lawrence Wyner Lawrence WynerLawrence Wyner More articles by this author View All Author Informationhttps://doi.org/10.1016/j.juro.2010.02.2328AboutPDF ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints ShareFacebookTwitterLinked InEmail INTRODUCTION AND OBJECTIVES In his seminal 1713 treatise, De Morbis Artificum Diatriba (Diseases of Tradesmen), Bernardino Ramazzini (1633-1714), the father of occupational medicine, included musicians as one of 52 occupations he described with various medical ailments peculiar to their work. Likewise, in 1887, the British Medical Journal (BMJ) became the first scientific periodical to publish an analysis of a musician's malady, “pianist's breakdown,” a study by G.V. Poore of muscle cramps caused by playing the piano. These endeavors spawned the field of performance medicine, which has grown to encompass multiple textbooks and journals dedicated to this topic, as well as a plethora of purported physical ailments ascribed to the challenges of playing various musical instruments. These conditions range from the serious (e.g. fiddler's neck, clarinetist's cheilitis) to the fanciful (e.g. Satchmo's Syndrome, guitar nipple). Perhaps the most bizarre of these was cello scrotum, first described by chemist John Murphy in a letter to the editor of the BMJ in 1974. Murphy and his wife, psychiatrist Elaine Murphy, had read a letter to the editor in a previous BMJ issue identifying guitar nipple, a condition supposedly consisting of areolar irritation in adolescent girls learning to play classical guitar. The Murphys, convinced that guitar nipple was bogus, wrote their own letter to the BMJ as a follow-up, claiming to have seen a cellist patient with scrotal dermatitis caused by long hours of scrotal contact with the vibrating body of his instrument. To their surprise, the letter was published in the BMJ, and began to be reported across the globe. Musicians unions in both the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union lobbied to have the condition listed as an industrial disease. Cello scrotum was referenced a dozen times in the peer-reviewed medical literature over the next 35 years, although skeptics questioned how the body of the cello could contact the scrotum if the instrument were properly played, and one wag commented that the affected cellists might be supplementing their meager incomes by sweeping chimneys! In any case, by Christmas 2008, the Murphys decided it was time to “come clean,” and sent the BMJ a letter of retraction which was published in January 2009, admitting that cello scrotum was indeed a high-brow hoax. The BMJ took the matter in stride, commenting that no one was harmed by the light-hearted deception, especially the Murphys (she sits on the board overseeing the British National Health Service and is a member of the House of Lords, and he is chairman of a brewery), and that the BMJ will continue its pioneering efforts on behalf of musicians' health. METHODS N/A RESULTS N/A CONCLUSIONS N/A Huntington, WV© 2010 by American Urological Association Education and Research, Inc.FiguresReferencesRelatedDetails Volume 183Issue 4SApril 2010Page: e437-e438 Advertisement Copyright & Permissions© 2010 by American Urological Association Education and Research, Inc.MetricsAuthor Information Lawrence Wyner More articles by this author Expand All Advertisement Advertisement PDF downloadLoading ...