Stanley Godwin started work as a general practitioner in Leamington in 1962. Here he first describes how he would refer patients to the Pump Rooms before going on to talk briefly about his own treatment there.

Did you know anything about the medical treatments offered at the Pump Rooms when you arrived in Leamington?

When I arrived in – no. No. No, they just happened to be there.

So how did you get to know about them?

Oh because, you know, if you’re a junior partner in a firm, you know, you learn what all the others know don’t you and you realise that if you’ve got someone you think needs physiotherapy, then in those days that was the place where you referred them to first. Though it may – I’m trying to think whether… I had to go through a consultant in those days. There was a man called Stevenson I remember when I first came here, he wasn’t here for long, but he was the, sort of the physical medicine or rheumatology type doctor and I’m not sure whether we had to refer everything through him, but later it became open access.

How often would you sort of refer patients through him?

Oh, impossible to say, impossible to say. As the need arose, really.

It wasn’t a rare thing though was it?

No, no. No I don’t think so. If people had sprained joints or particular conditions; bad necks, bad backs and so on and so forth then you would just ask them to see him or go down and talk to Anne Golland [superintendent physiotherapist] or some such and say, anything you can do for this guy, and explain the situation. I used to go and like to talk to people face to face rather than writing them letters. Much more time consuming, but much more satisfactory.

And when patients came back to you, were they usually happy with the treatment they had received down there?

Oh I don’t think they were unhappy, whether it made them any better or not is another matter. You know, I mean those days quite a lot of physiotherapy, there was one particular thing which I used to when my back used to go wrong, they used to give me hot packs, which was fantastic and for half an hour after you walked out you felt you walked on air, but within an hour or two the whole thing had seized up again. You know, you can’t wear a hot pack [laughing] all day, all night forever. So it was a bit primitive in many ways. Well physiotherapy is pretty primitive in many ways.