There have been stories like that around also: (Sixty Minutes did a story a couple of decades ago about an old small-town doctor who regularly misdiagnosed and mutilated pregnant women).

I'm sure that not all will agree with Northrup, that goes without saying of any practitioner in any field, and also because she does represent a more holistic and feminist school of thought. She has been seen in lectures here in the US for a number of years on the Public Broadcasting System, and peppers her medical talks with a lot of common sense. I found the appendices in her books to be very useful when evaluating and researching my own health issues. (Another one who did very useful lectures was Judith Reichman, MD, who also produced a few books as the result of the popularity of her lectures).

Northrup has produced several large books, but I suspect they're the product of a collective with her staff or colleagues to put together research-wise, with her text layered in. I don't read this kind of book cover-to-cover, I pick it up to get a general introduction and then go to the chapters that pertain to the reason I picked it up in the first place.

I hope this helps in evaluating her work. If you're interested in the real hard-core feminist view of women's medicine, the 25-Anniversary edition of Our Bodies, Ourselves is coming out this year. I have the earlier edition, so I'll probably pick this one up also. :)

SRS