When you are healing a villager get a child to do it, no chance of them having a kiss and cuddle instead and if you get the same child to do all the healing it will be adept or even master by the time it reaches 14, making it easier to get to elder status!

I get my male adept parents to teach the children, simply drag him to the kids and all the kids run to the village centre to learn (REALLY like kids - lol!)

Once all your buildings are built you can still drag builders to fix the huts!

will study strange plants increase healing skills? I want to make my villager become a master doctor so that i can gather more totems but it seems so hard to become a master!

Yes. You should see a message in the status bar that your villager has increased his or her healing skills after they've studied the plant for a while. Either that or they have failed and they will walk away shaking their heads.

The other way to increase a doctor's skills, of course, is to actually heal other sick villagers.

yea....shes already over the hill.....i kept her pregnant...she could manage that(hope thats not what my daughter does too..sheesh)...she did manage to become a master scientist though....i like my little man who runs best though....he gets stuff done fast..including making babies..ha...oh and by the way i showed my lazy girl with name similar to my daughters and she said i was lame...hmmph!