Q. If fever is the body’s way of fighting infection, should I avoid anti-fever medicines such as acetaminophen and ibuprofen?

A. The best evidence suggests that there is neither harm nor benefit to treating a fever with fever-reducing medications like acetaminophen or ibuprofen.

Hundreds of millions of years ago, animals developed fever as an evolutionary response to infection. Awareness of this phenomenon has given rise to two appealing, but conflicting, schools of thought. One is that fever is a natural response to infection, so one shouldn’t interfere with it; the other is that fever is a potentially harmful consequence of infection, so one should suppress it to minimize its complications.

The theory of the salubrious fever has an interesting history. In the pre-antibiotic era of the early 20th century, doctors prescribed pyrotherapy, a medically induced fever, as a treatment for a variety of conditions from syphilis to rheumatic fever. They used various methods to raise the patient’s body temperature to between 103 and 107 degrees Fahrenheit.