You can use the yucky stews to get villagers sick so that you can increase the healing skills of another villager quickly. The kids heal villagers too and seem to build up their skill levels quicker than adults do.

As for the events, I've found that ALL rotting sacks or barrels have nasty results with spiders or rats - don't open them! Results can change for all of the others even for the same answer. 'yes' can be good or bad and 'no' can be good or bad -- randomly on the same scenario. Sick is not necessarily bad because your healers get quick points.

I found that renaming the little people as they progressed in skill level was the easiest and cheapest way to go. A villager named 'Rfh' has mastered Research and is currently working on farming, but also has a propensity toward healing. That way, I can go through the detail screens for all of the villagers at once, change their preferences, and still know where to keep placing them when they are not yet trained. Sometimes it is easier to drag a whole group around together until they all reach 'trained builder' then change the preferences as they start on farming. You can have them dabble in everything so that they will be more likely to keep working on something while you're out.

I like to leave the game without pausing to get the points and food up quicker (both are in the multi-millions without cheating). Sometimes there's a good surprise when you go back in, and sometimes you have a major emergency to solve. It makes it more exciting after you've solved all of the puzzles and challenges.