A member of the United Kingdom's House of Lords confessed this week to making up an ailment more than 30 years ago that has concerned some male musicians ever since.

In Tuesday's issue of the British Medical Journal, British lawmaker Elaine Murphy admitted that she and her husband made up "cello scrotum," which relates to chafing from the instrument, reported CNN.com.

She said they got the idea after reading a 1974 letter in the journal about guitar nipple, which they thought "highly likely to be a spoof."

Murphy, a doctor, wrote that she and her husband decided to "go one further by submitting a letter pretending to have noted a similar phenomenon in cellists," she wrote. "Anyone who has ever watched a cello being played would realize the physical impossibility of our claim."

The British Medical Journal published Murphy's letter "somewhat to our astonishment," she wrote.

But Murphy said they've been enjoying the joke ever since, and were tickled when the condition was referenced in a Dec. 12 BMJ article, "A symphony of maladies."

Fiona Godlee, editor of the BMJ, told Britain's Independent newspaper that although the journal frowns on misconduct, she said she thought it was "wonderful it has been going all these years and no one realized," and that she hopes she's right in saying no harm has been done.

Additional Resource:

• Murphy's Jan. 27 Confession