Well, it worked like this - I lost a point of vitality in the upper monastery, ran like hell to Arnika, with only 2 encounters. The first one, 4 piercer modais and a sige, I survived by stink bombing the sige to death and then just defending until the piercers ran away - this worked as I had previuosly cheesed up stealth to 60 with some helpful seekers in the lower monastery - and I was all ready to use the ones in the seeker room, too 
The second encouncter was two swarming wasps, one of which got instakilled and the other wasn't too much of a problem.
Got to Arnika, got to BRaffit's pool, and drank. Cured disease, but still missing a vitality point. At the next level up, though, I 'automatically' got the vit point back, but only had 5 more points to spend - i.e. the game decided my first stat point was going to be that vitality whether I liked it or not. Intriguing.
Jimbo,Thanks for clearing that up. I was a bit suspicious about Braffit's ability to restore atttribute points.
Regarding the game automatically applying the lost Vitality point. You probably no longer met the minimum Vitality requirement for the current profession. So the game "forced applied" what was needed.
An example is if you create a Dwarf Monk. You will be an apprentice for the first 4 levels and the game will automatically apply points in the required attributes until all the requirements are met.
Spence