Falma is about 10 is doing all this without a proper explanation, and you expect him to just roll with it?
May as well just blind fold himself and jump off a cliff at that point
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socratic_method
Basically, when a person of science or philosophy is presented with something they don't understand, you ask questions and scrutinize it to reason out the edges of it. "I don't think this is true," HAS to be met with "Why don't I think this is true? What are the specific contradictions that it makes? Is my assumption logically valid?"
This is Bronze-age stuff, and Palle is from the early-mid Renaissance. Any student of medicine or surgery is going to have this so pounded into their heads, possibly along with the Scientific Method, that they SHOULD have difficulty thinking in any other way.
'This thing that seems ridiculous to me also seems to have some kind of rational consistency. I need to take a damn closer look at it to be more certain of what's happening rather than just jumping to conclusions.' It would be absolutely necessary for diagnosing diseases or performing surgical operations.
In Palle's defense, he believes he's dying with pretty good evidence. That'd give anyone some serious desperation.
As son of one of the most prestigious surgeons in the country attending one of the most prestigious universities in that same country, Palle should never have the option of being ABLE to dismiss statements like the ones Pharma and Ellen make with such emotion. He answers with anger and fury when he should be answering with cold logic like,
"Pharma, you're not even shaving yet. How can I possibly believe these ludicrously-seeming claims?"
Pharma's dad DOES do this earlier in the story, when he's trying to refuse to let his son practice untried medicine on the Queen. I haven't read any source material, so I can only assume that because of the contrast there, the author is doing this on purpose: Palle is emotionally unqualified to be a physician.