Mechanics vs. Scientists

I'm reading up on medical education and practice in the eleventh and twelfth centuries (no, this is not an oxymoron of some sort--this is the era when medical education started to be systematized, and while the reading is slow going, it's also fascinating). And, as often happens when I research something, I've picked up a couple of things that I feel like I always knew, just didn't know I knew. Follow that? So what did I know that my reading has recently clarified for me? That Medicine is literally and historically both a craft and a science. In the middle ages and centuries following, surgeons were looked down upon because they put their hands on the patient--they were technicians, essentially, rather than scientists. (Is this the source of the British custom of calling surgeons "Mr." or "Miss" rather than Doctor?) The two big sources of diagnostic information medieval doctors had were pulse and urine: the urine flask was the visual shorthand for doctor in paintings of the era (and while it was declasse for a doctor to lay hands on a patient beyond taking the pulse, it was perfectly okay, even necessary get up close and personal with urine, smelling, touching and tasting it to gauge texture, sugar content and so on). What would the medieval medicos of the twelfth century think of today's surgeons, who are the rock stars of medicine? Mere mechanics!