The Eponymous Dr. Crummie

God Help the Old North State...please....

The medical professionals who volunteer at the N.C. General Assembly usually treat minor injuries and dispense standard medical advice. Not this week.

One of them handed out copies of his book in which he advocates greater use of the lobotomy -- the controversial surgical procedure in which a doctor removes or detaches the front of a patient's brain.

"We don't hear about the successful lobotomies," writes Dr. Bob Crummie in Chapter 14 of his book, "Dr. Bob's Grocery Store Medicine and Healthy Life Anecdotes."

Crummie, a Rutherfordton physician, served Tuesday as Doctor of the Day at the legislature. His 232-page book, which he distributed for free, has plenty of homespun medical advice, as well as plenty of more-unusual statements.

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Perhaps his most controversial opinions relate to gays and lesbians.

"There is no such thing as a homosexual. The Gay Movement is a hoax," Crummie writes. "Individuals who act out homosexually are at best very neurotic and at worst psychotic. Most of them are character disorders."

In what he describes as "one of my funniest stories," Crummie tells how he once put a stop to homosexuality at an N.C. prison when, as superintendent, he threatened to give electric shock therapy to anyone caught in the act. With several inmates present, he demonstrated the procedure on one inmate who was severely depressed, he writes.

Threaten to shock a queer while zapping a man and get yourself put on a pedestal in the NC General Assembly. God help us.