The Trotula or "Little Trota" is a collection of three texts from Salerno, Italy that circulated widely (very widely, 125 surviving mss which is huge) as a compendium from the 12th-15th century, generally considered the most important textual resource for women's-specific medicine in the later Middle Ages. The three texts--Treatments of Women, Conditions of Women, and Women's Cosmetics--were definitely written by three different authors. They show markedly different writing styles and levels of proper rhetorical training, for example, and discuss medicine (or makeup) using different frameworks (symptom-and-treat versus a more philosophical approach).

The three works undergo some changes over the course of their life in circulation, including in the 16th century printed edition, all of which are as certainly as we can be the product of male interpolators. Monica Green, who is the foremost scholar on the Trotula and very possibly on medieval gynaecology and women in medicine, is convinced that Conditions of Women and Women's Cosmetics are the initial work of male authors as well. Treatments of Women is more complicated.

We don't quite know why Salerno, specifically, but for some reason the city gained an international reputation in the 11-early 13C for its female medical practitioners. They're not really associated with gynaecology, just with medicine. This is really interesting because even though this time is before the rise of universities (which exclude women), there is still no formal structure for women's education outside basic learning for religious life in convents. (To be clear, there are some phenomenally educated nuns, and women's houses with exceptional schooling--but I've never seen evidence or even speculation that Trota was a nun or that these Salerno medicae were monastic).

Although we have names or relations for a couple of these women--Berdefolia Medica, the mother of Platearius--Trota or Trocta is special. The mentions of women healers just include healing, not abstract medical investigation or writing. But there is one text that is directly attributed to Trota, called Practica secundum Trotam (Practical Medicine According to Trota). This is a list of remedies for various conditions, including but not limited to gynaecology and obstetrics. Trota almost certainly wrote more. A later anthology that reproduced a lot of the Practica also attributes other passages in a similar style to her, suggesting they came from the same source that is now lost to us.

So back to the Trotula, and Treatments of Women specifically. Trota was almost certainly not the 'final' author of the initial version of the text that was then anthologized, edited, amended as it was copied and recopied over the centuries. There is one passage that includes a story of Trota trumping a bunch of male doctors to cure a woman--told in the third person.

But medieval conceptions of 'authorship' were different--you would recognize the word 'auctoritas' (or in this case, auctricitas) as the root of authority. The attestation of Treatments of Women to Trota, in the Middle Ages, was a recognition that Trota was the authority whose ideas and teachings stood behind the text. And indeed, Treatments of Women derives quite a bit of its prescriptions from Trota's own Practica. So while Trota may not have written any of the Trotula herself (although Green offers the possibility that Trota may have dictated some of it to a scribe, who added other passages of his own or combined them with passages dictated by another--the relationship between 'author' and scribe is an additional wrinkle in medieval notions of authorship), she is nevertheless its authority.

Of course by extrapolation, she became the authority behind the whole Trotula. In an age where men frequently tried very hard to obscure women and women writers (although there are some pseudo-Hildegard of Bingen and pseudo-Birgitta of Sweden texts running around in the late Middle Ages), that's pretty impressive.

Now, you also asked about reception. Indeed, the Trotula enjoyed immense popularity in the Middle Ages as academic gynaeocological writing. I can't say what impact on the level of local medicine in, say, Trier or Norwich it would have had. But academics were certainly reading it. The texts conformed to the underlying Galenic medical theory that predominated in the later Middle Ages, and were a go-to resource for gynaecology. Later authors even adopted some of the passages wholesale into their own works. (Again...medieval authorship: it's complicated). That makes it pretty clear the teachings were valued in and of themselves, not because Trota was a woman.

That said, the kind of 'creation' of Trotula (the name of the text) as a historical person suggests a second layer to the story. Although medieval women were systematically excluded in principle and in fact from advanced education and a voice in public affairs (religion or otherwise), a very very very few did manage to achieve some degree of public recognition of their writing. They had two basic options: anonymity, or staking a vocal claim to femininity. It's really hard to pin down a context for Trota, because nearly all our medieval female authors are religious (in religious/quasi-religious life, writing about religious topics, or both). The best parallel I can think to draw is, when people saw a text by a woman (!!!), they might have assumed it came with extra authority because women don't write publicly, and yet this woman's work is getting approval. (It's a bit easier to see in religious texts as those authors claimed divine revelation was the source of their work, not themselves. NOT a factor here.)

The Trotula is really complicated and I tried my best. Let me know if I need to clarify anything!

If you're interested in checking it out for yourself, Green published a Latin-English facing page edition. (Incidentally, Green is very active in the online medievalist community and I'm pretty sure she wrote the Wikipedia page on the Trotula, so you could check that out for more info. Mods, please check out that page's reference list and let this one go, thanks.)