In the early 1880s, British, French, and German teams of physicians raced to find the cause of cholera in Egypt, which at the time was ruled by a Khedive, but in reality, dominated by the British Empire. The British team sought to demonstrate the absence of a specific pathogen, so that quarantines, which posed an obstacle to commerce, could be abolished. Like the French team, the German one, led by the bacteriologist Robert Koch (1843-1910), in contrast favoured an explanation based on the germ theory and concentrated on discovering the disease’s specific pathogen. Ultimately, Koch’s efforts were successful, although he had to travel to India, the epicentre of the disease, in order to confirm his findings.