I understand what you're saying headchef, but after the permadeath nerf wounds are the only thing keeping pve and pvp minimally risky activities.
Besides, the same reasoning you use could be applied to pvp and pve themselves. It's not about mercy or no mercy, but about giving incentives to a more developed form of playing. Hunting bears and mammoths isn't easily accessible to noobs and either - if they want that kind of content, they need either a lot of effort or a village membership. It's the same thing with advanced healing.
And a large part of the game's industry is directed at pvp. Mining, making steel, and making silk is annoying. Still, it needs to be that way. The same should be true for healing: the ability to heal serious wounds should be a reward for long-term effort of the players, and wounds should be an incentive to push industry, interaction and development.
I think a good compromise would be an expensive hearth magic (or numen thing) that reverts a serious wound back to a mild one. This way at least the noob would have to spend a lot of his time playing in order to receive XP events, and it wouldn't be yet another nerf to the game's content.