Journalism, not science.
I am extremely sympathetic to this book generally (and I say this as someone whose ruptured appendix was dismissed as "menstrual cramps" in parallel with many of the anecdotes contained in the book). But at a certain point, one must bear in mind that journalism is heavily influenced by a need to construct a narrative rather than examine evidence with a critical eye. The many anecdotes do illustrate a pattern of longstanding institutional dismissal, abuse, and mistreatment of women, but the book becomes increasingly weak as it tries to "prove" that, essentially, there's no such thing as a psychosomatic illness, only women unfairly viewed as hysterical. For example, the last section is devoted to Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS), a condition which is not recognized by any reputable medical body. The premise of the whole book, of course, is that lack of recognition by major medical institutions is not proof that a condition does not exist. However, the inverse is also false: just because institutional medicine has failed to recognize legitimate diseases largely due to sexism and misogyny, it does not follow that institutional medicine NOT recognizing a condition is evidence of its legitimacy! Blinded clinical trials have shown that people who claim to have MCS react as strongly to placebos as they do to the claimed chemical triggers; studies found that the strength of reaction corresponded not to the chemical or amount of chemical, but to the perception of the presence of chemicals. In short, there is little evidence that MCS exists except in the psychology of those who fear "chemicals," or rather, inorganic substances which they are convinced are intrinsically harmful merely by virtue of their being synthetic. Dusenbery, who presumably must have come across such studies in the course of her research as they are very easy to find, did not bother mentioning them because they do not support her story.