MEDICINE is more than the absence of disease.

The World Health Organisation defines it as a complete state of physical, mental and social well-being. We treat people who are already sick, pulling them out of the river of disease.

Later one questions how they fell in the water and travels upstream to find the broken bridges that need fixing.

So joining the dots: much heart disease is caused by lack of exercise.

If we make it easy to walk and cycle in Weymouth we will cut strokes and heart attacks. Rising global temperatures caused by carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels are spreading tropical diseases such as malaria and dengue fever. Heatwaves kill older people.

So if we move to renewable solar, wind and Portland Race tidal energy we will cut deaths.

The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everybody is an interesting book. In it public health doctors show with international comparative graphs that inequality damages societies: eroding trust, increasing anxiety and illness. Inequality and the impacts of bail-out austerity aggravates premature deaths in the poorer wards of Weymouth.

Concern about the poor quality of some private rented flats leading to mould and cold causing respiratory illnesses in local children links medicine to this bigger picture.

Air pollution on Boot Hill and King Street from queues of vehicles causing chronic bronchitis and reducing life expectancy also link apparently isolated facts to the unifying bigger theme of a healthy environment. So I pray for some understanding of the famous Dr Virchow’s dictum: â "Medicine is a social science and politics is nothing else but medicine on a large scale,” and thank the Echo for publishing my random rants over the years which have an underlying theme of improving health.

Jon Orrell Coldharbour Chickerell Weymouth