I think it was Steve Martin, though I may be wrong, who had a bit about what an alien would think if the first thing they saw Earthlings doing was a dentist doing a root canal. It would very likely look indistinguishable from torture, though of course there are important differences.
Medicine is definitely weird in lots of ways, from the suspension of normal body space conventions to the willing submission to discomfort for a usually delayed good. As a vet, I have a similar work context to pediatricians in that my patients can’t give informed consent, and their discomfort can’t be easily mitigated by improving their understanding of the reasons for it, so the owner and I end up making treatment decisions on behalf of the patient over their objections.
I don’t agree that history and philosophy of science are useless subjects, though. For scientists and clinicians, they are helpful in avoiding pitfalls in clinical decision making that our natural cognitive tendencies lead us into. For patients I think they may be helpful in setting appropriate expectations for what medicine can and cannot do for them. Epistemology, in particular, is useful if you learn about it an understand its implications before you’ve fully committed to an anti/pseudoscientific set of beliefs. Once you’ve gone a few steps down that road, though, it’s a steep climb back up.