"Grew ill and died" yeah, of a broken heart. It never seems to go well for wild animals in the stories... My first baby was a raccoon* and I'm lucky to live in the country where she could make a smooth transition to living outside and raising her own family. Some of my most precious memories are of her coming home for a visit and a cuddle after she was grown. *Someone had shot her mother, convinced that she had rabies because she was out in the day time. When their babies are little, they eat when they can, just like us.

Well all I could think when seeing PoC for the first time - is I guess Tim Powers wrote this... but he wasn't credited. (Sorta like Roger Dean and Avatar - wtf?)On Stranger Tides was published in 1987 and not much in the last PoC that was called On Stranger Tides was like it, so I am guessing the title and credit were for the earlier uncredited rip off. At least the Monkey Island guy credits him.

"Before conducting human trials for drugs, pharmaceutical companies are often fully aware of many of the side effects of the products they're testing. So, for instance, if a drug is known to cause dizziness and nausea, the drug company running the test wants the placebo to have the same side effects. And they have an explanation for this. They say the placebo should mimic the drug being tested so that the control group of the experiment will have side effects similar to the placebo group. Without that, they claim, the results of a blind study would be compromised."
Just saying it again, this time I am quoting from Sepp Hesslberger from 'Prescibing a placeo' on Health Supreme. It is not true that placebos do not have side effets, exactly the opposite is true.

The one thing about placebos that usually gets left off stories like this is that the placebo is not an inert substance but something that is meant to make the subject think it may be working - so it will have some effect. Seems like what the story should be about is what was in the placebo that was working? and investigate that.