Innovations in
Medicine
by Walt
Giersbach
“Sometimes
names exist for things that don't exist and never
did. The BBC published an article on its Web site
… about the nasty-sounding complaint cello
scrotum. A letter about it appeared in the
British Medical Journal on 11 May 1974.
“It
turns out that it was a spoof by Dr Elaine Murphy,
now the highly respected and respectable Baroness
Murphy, formerly a professor at Guy's and St
Thomas's Hospital in London. She created it after
reading reports about guitar nipple, which she
thought was a hoax. She has come clean because
the term resurfaced in the 2008 Christmas edition
of the Journal.” —Michael Quinion,
World Wide Words Jan. 31, 2009
Dear Mr.
Anthony:
Forgive me for
writing, but your incessant calls to my medical
practice deserve a lengthy and precise answer.
Yesterday, you called my nurse away from a
deathly ill patient to demand that she describe
the symptoms of “cello scrotum.”
Regardless of the fact that you play the cello in
the Brighton String Orchestra, let me
emphatically say there is no such thing as
“cello scrotum.” (And only in your
wildest nightmares is there something called
“violin veins” or “harpist’s
hernia.”)
Your so-called
disease is a spoof created by Dr. Elaine
Murphy—a former professor at Guy’s and
St. Thomas’s Hospital in London. She made it
up it after reading reports about “guitar
nipple.” This is not to be confused with
“jogger’s nipple,” a sports
medicine problem created by friction of clothing
against the protuberances on a woman’s bra-less
chest.
Last week you
suggested your snoring was accompanied by night-time
twitching, or PLMD. Even I had to look that up as
Periodic Limb Movement Disorder. (My nurse said
in my apoplexy that I was suffering from
IWTKYD—I Want to Kill You Disorder.)
Then, you
telephoned several times to make an appointment
associated with your (self-diagnosed) “Wii
knee.” The Wii Fit you received for the
holidays did not give you a cartilaginous problem
with your patella. (My harried nurse suggested
that if you throw your shoulder out, you might
consider following it, but my Hippocratic Oath
would still require me to treat you.)
As with tennis
elbow, there are bonafide joint problems
associated with extreme activities. I’ve
treated a number of cases of “Wii knee,”
in which the patient suffers repetitive stress
injury after playing that particular video game.
However, you do not have this or any other
affliction, including “texting thumbs”
from continual messaging on your mobile phone.
What you have is an obsession with logging onto
WebMD, reading Time Magazine and watching re-runs
of ER.
You have also
bandied it about that I’m a prude for not
writing you an Rx for Viagra or Cyalis. That is a
gross calumny, Mr. Anthony. Your problem lies not
in low libido but in your anatomy. Most penises
hang down and slightly to the left. Yours,
however, is in the shape of an inverted question
mark—a problem about which I can do nothing.
I insist that
you refrain from creating these imaginary
problems and invented injuries. Consider this an
injunction against wasting our time. From your
medical records, your only legitimate complaint
is your weight—20 pounds of which could be
eliminated by having your head removed.
Cordially,
Dr. Heinrich
Manoeuvre
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