BUTTERCUP.--Bunions are due to the pressure of badly-fitting boots. In the human foot the great or innermost toe bends away from the other toes. This gives to the inner border of the foot a direction slanting inwards towards the middle line of the body. Most boots are made with their inner border slanting outwards away from the middle line so as to meet the outer border of the boots at a more or less acute angle. We have therefore the great toe naturally tending to depart from its fellows, and we have the boot forcing the great toe towards, and possibly under or over, the other toes. The boot is an unyielding structure. The inner border of the foot is also practically unyielding, except at one spot, the joint of the great toe. The first toe is therefore forced inwards and its joint projects as an angle. The boot presses upon this joint, a corn forms, inflammation is set up, and the joint becomes diseased, forming a bunion. When once a bunion has developed, it is no good talking about its prevention. We must attempt to cure it, and it is not so very difficult to cure it, and keep it cured, if you fully understand how it originated. A bunion is caused by pressure upon the joint. The cure of the bunion consists of removing the pressure from the joint. To do this you should wear boots in which the inner border slopes away from the centre of the boot. We advise you to get a pair of boots of this shape made for yourself. If the bunion is intractable, you may need a "post" in the boot between the great and the second toe. Keep your foot scrupulously clean, and take a foot-bath every evening. J. S. N.--As your mother died from heart disease, it is no wonder that you imagine your own symptoms to be likewise due to heart trouble; but the symptoms you mention are all characteristic of simple dyspepsia; not one of them is common in heart disease. When you say "at times my pulse beats very fast and sometimes irregularly," we presume that you mean that you feel your heart beating fast or irregularly, in other words, that you have palpitation. When the heart is beating fast or irregularly, as it frequently does in heart disease, it produces no symptoms which might inform the sufferer of her state. It is only by feeling the pulse that irregularities in its action can be detected. We will not say that heart disease is not hereditary, but the importance of this factor has been greatly over-estimated. Disease of the heart is very frequently due to rheumatic fever; and the tendency to rheumatism is; to a certain extent, hereditary. You will find plenty of information about indigestion in our last year's volume.