WILLIAM JAMES CUMMING: Notes of a Wanderer, in Search of Health, through Italy, Egypt, Greece, Turkey, and up the Danube.LONDON 1839 First edition,in 8vo,complete in two volumes,contemporary leather over boards, text clean with few sporadic spotting in some pages, the two frontis and one folding map, overall in very good condition. Cumming was a physician himself, traveling to find a climate that would alleviate his own illness. This gives his observations a unique flavor. He arrived in Greece during the early years of the Bavarian Regency, provides detailed meteorological and health-related assessments of various Greek cities, debating whether the air of Athens was truly beneficial for pulmonary complaints..He describes the miserable state of the roads and the lack of proper inns, often contrasting the ancient glory of the ruins with the poverty and disease he witnessed among the local population. As a doctor, he provides rare descriptions of the hospitals and the prevalence of ophthalmia and malaria in the marshy areas of Greece. An unusual rare account by a doctor focusing in the very early years of independent Greece