The pelvic massage restored the uterus to its proper place and thus the typical women's complaints, like headaches, backaches, fatigue, depression and such, were cured.
[4] The doctor or therapist put his or her finger in the vagina of the patient and simultaneously massaged the uterus from the outside with the other hand.
[5] Sometimes the massage was actually carried out by a female assistant of the male physician or physiotherapist, but her participation in the process was usually not mentioned in medical writings and the male practitioner was cited as the sole expert on the method instead.
[6] Contrary to what Rachel Maines claimed in her book The Technology of Orgasm,[7] many practitioners of this massage were aware of the possibility of a sexual stimulation during the procedure and, like the Finnish physician Georg Asp (1834–1901),[8] made it clear that the sexual excitation shall be circumvented and the clitoris studiously avoided.
[10] One important reason to that was the influence of early psychoanalysis: the locus of women's pathological issues was moved from the uterus to the neurotic brain, and they were now seen as psychological, not physiological ailments.