"carpenters of the human body"

I've seen a video of a knee replacement. And yes, it's very much like a carpenter working on a piece of wood. The hammering, the nailing, the sawing, it's all there. If someone was doing it to me, I would definitely be freaked out.

Sounds to me that you are minimizing the skills of carpenters rather :) I meant that mostly in gist, but they are really essential, just like surgeons, only that the objects the manipulate happens to be different, and mistakes by surgeons tend to be more "costly" in terms of human life.