"Cello Scrotum" Exposed as Hoax

A medical ailment that has worried male members of string sections across the music world for over 30 years has been exposed as a hoax.

A senior British lawmaker confessed to making up the condition known as "cello scrotum" -- which relates to chafing from the instrument -- after reading about another musically-related ailment called "guitarist's nipple" in the British Medical Journal in 1974.

Elaine Murphy, who is a member of The House of Lords and a trained doctor, came clean about the prank she devised with husband John in a letter to the BMJ published on Wednesday.

She said: "Perhaps after 34 years it's time for us to confess that we invented cello scrotum.

"Reading (Dr) 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.