Heh, I know I've posted a bazillion times already, but I made some more progress with Bochs.
The problem was I was using the wrong version of Bochs. I was using a newer, beta version than the current stable release. It turns out that the older version still panics when you do things like use the drill, but it behaves much better when the panic occurs: you can select "alwayscont" (always continue when panic occurs). Note that the Bochs team doesn't recommend doing this, because panics are supposed to be fatal, so don't do this on a hard disk image you care about.
NOTE: if this panic first happens when you're drilling into the patient's skull, which isn't unlikely, the game will resume when you hit ENTER after "alwayscont", and the drill will start drilling. Hurry and get back to the main window, enable the mouse if you disabled it, and click to stop the drill before it penetrates too deep! The game seems playable other than this.
To get around this, you can set in the configuration file, or before running the simulation, to always ignore panics. But the former solution will be in effect all the time (except when you explicitly re-enable panics before running), and you have to not forget to do the latter every session.
EDIT: I've successfully completed a subdural hematoma operation now, with the "panic: action=ignore" thing in the config file, with nary a hitch. It looks to me like it works now! But there's still no sound yet. 🙁
- Kef