Cello scrotum

The Cello testicles, also called Cello scrotum is a for fun invented disease, which was first published in 1974 in the British Medical Journal ( BMJ).

In 1974, the English gerontologist and Alzheimer's expert, Elaine Murphy learned (now Baroness Murphy) and her husband John, head of a brewery that the English physician P. Curtis had published an article in the British Medical Journal about a condition called guitar nipple. Curtis had diagnosed the disease in three girls. Supposedly, it should be caused by the constant friction of the instrument to the nipple.

The couple, which considered the message as a joke, then decided that a step further to drive. Therefore, the non- physician John Murphy sent in the same year a letter to the prestigious magazine in which he reported an alleged testicular stimulation at a professional cellist. The Cello testicles should have been caused by excessive pressing of the instrument to the scrotum ( scrotum ). To the surprise of the couple, the message in this magazine that are not usually serious letters were carefully screened, published.

The cello scrotum remained as an illness in the professional world until 2009, although the phenomenon described is physiologically impossible. This article has been cited several times. Last was also reported in a BMJ article of 12 December 2008, faced by musicians exposed where it went to various diseases. However, earlier doubts about the existence of suffering had already come up - about 1991 in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology.

Revealed was the dizziness of the Murphy himself, who kept it after 34 years for the time to uncover the truth.

Whether the disease exists guitar nipple, is unknown.