On the other hand...

[smascrns]

... there's more to it than just, "I think the most obvious example of the dichotomy of role-playing games exists in how healing magic is used. On one hand, there’s the “real life” magic of healing, how magicians in the Middle Ages used spells and charms to (supposedly) heal people. On the other side of the gold coin, you have the trope of videogames that heal instantly, just by finding a piece of food on the ground".

Yes, there's the way games handle it and the way it worked on real life. But most games are not inspired by real life, they are inspired by fiction, specially cinema. And in cinema things work differently. In movies most damage cures on itself very fast. The hero is pounded to the ground and he gets sume bruises for around 10 minutes of movie time, that's all. Because, frankly, who wants to see an action movie where the hero spends the time walking around in a weel chair?

Cinema created its own unrealistic conventions because it's about entertainment and sometimes realism doesn't entertain. It's the same with rpgs. Frankly, I much prefer your second description of a treatment. I don't have the patience to listen to a description of a treatment. I don't have the patience to play the fine details on how to handle vegetables to come out with a concotion that cures the damage my character suffered. I want my character up and well, point. Since the damage hew suffered is described in game terms, I want his treatment in game terms. And if the nurse is sexy as hell, I don't need a graphic description of her looks either because I don't use rpgs to fulfill my sensual needs.

[Geraldine]

Talking about "realism" is a red herring after a certain point, in my opinion, especially when people discussing it don't have a shared view of what constitutes "realism".
Somwhere on RPGnet, a debate about the "points of light" (PoL's) concept in D&D4e came up, and a geologist weighed in with his(?) opinion on some sociological issues and complications surrounding PoL's. The specifics of his opinion aside, there's a certain level of dispute that is inevitable when field-experts and laypersons engage in a debate about realism.
Still... when we do find obviously fantastical or illogical notions in D&D, why not find a clever, entertaining way to include them in the game, without drifting too much into absurdity (unless that's what you're aiming for).
The various vision-levels of different PC races (low-light, infravision, etc.) in 3rd ed. made for some interesting possibilities as far as day to day life among those races. Elves might live like rabbits if they don't sleep much and they're able to see in really low light: their biggest activity periods might be dusk and dawn, like many other mammals.
Dwarfs would be downright strange to non-dwarfs: imagine what dwarven decorations would look like if they, with their black-and-white infravision, used any old mineral paint to coat something, as long as the thing looked good in gray-scale. Utterly lightless tunnels and bizarre, hooded hearths, that let out heat but not light, might be two of the various odd things one might encounter in a dwarf-city.
And so on.

[Geraldine]

As for instant, magical healing, the question of access would probably make it so that *most* people live very normal lives indeed, but when an actual, real-life Cleric (as opposed to just an Expert-class NPC with priestly training) heals a farm boy who'd been thrown from a horse, just with a touch of his hand, that could be the kind of story one shares for years. Who knows? Maybe the feeling of the god Pelor's presence will make him want to join the Church when he's old enough!
Of course, that'll probably be the only time the boy ever gets magically healed, as the combination of scarce raw talent and specialized training (fewer teachers means fewer students who actually learn something) will make it so that Clerics and Wizards will charge a mint for their services. Adventurers, obviously, don't charge per-service in the same way, necessarily, but will generally expect some kind of compensation.
The aristocracy and the richer merchant classes might have access to this kind of thing when they want it, but 95% of humanity will still have to do it the old-fashioned way.