The St Kilda boat cough under the microscope.

The inhabitants of St Kilda, a remote archipelago in the Outer Hebrides, suffered from outbreaks of a respiratory tract infection known as the boat cough every time strangers visited their isolated community between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. This condition has always been labelled influenza, but a review of contemporary records and modern microbiological evidence strongly suggests the illness was due to rhinovirus.