Koch next turned his attention to cholera, and began to conduct research in Egypt in the hopes of isolating the causative agent of the disease. However, he was not able to complete the task before the epidemic in Egypt ended, and, after a short trip to Persia, traveled to India to continue with the study. In 1884 in Bombay state of India (the present day State of Maharastra, India), Koch resided and researched at Grant Medical College, (or by some accounts in Kolkata, formerly Calcutta in undivided British India) where he was able to determine the causative agent of cholera, isolating "Vibrio cholerae". The bacterium had originally been isolated in 1854 by Italian anatomist Filippo Pacini, but its exact nature and his results were not widely known. In the same year, the Catalan Joaquim Balcells i Pascual discovered the bacterium and in 1856 probably António Augusto da Costa Simões and José Ferreira de Macedo Pinto, two Portuguese men, did the same.