cellist's scrotum

The story starts with a friend who had skier’s thumb.  With not a snowball in sight! Apparently skiers can get this if they fall while still hanging on to their skies because it puts all their weight onto their thumbs which may then suffer a ligament tear.  My friend managed to do the same holding something in one hand while pushing up from the floor on his thumb.

That made we wonder what other aches and pains are associated with different activites.  There are a number of wear and tear injuries — runner’s knee, jumper’s knee, golfer’s elbow, tennis elbow.  In baseball this kind of injury is known as Tommy John elbow because inn 1974 Tommy was the first pitcher to have experimental surgery to fix it.

It made me think of similar ailments associated with musical instruments.  Here pressure and dermatitis seem to be constant problems.  You have flautist’s chin and guitarist’s nipple.  Violinists are particularly lucky — they can get fiddler’s neck (a stiff neck from clamping on the violin) and violin hickey (a pressure point on the collarbone or thereabouts).  The cellist’s chest is a similar mark on the chest caused by repeated pressure from the cello.  Repetition gives you the pianist’s palsy (involuntary contractions of the fingers) and the drummer’s wrist.  But the funniest one was the cellist’s scrotum described as the raw and swollen loins of men who play their cellos too long or too vigorously.  This condition was written up in 1975 in the British Medical Journal until it was revealed that a couple of English doctors, Drs Elaine Murphy and John M. Murphy, having been amused by the write-up of guitarist’s nipple (mastitis of the nipple caused by pressure against the guitar), decided to have a little joke. In 2009 they felt that they had better confess (after 34 years) but they did say in their defence that they had never expected to be taken seriously and that anyone who watched a man playing the cello would realise that cellist’s scrotum was impossible.