Good point on having a reference guide for what antiobiotics to use for which ailments. I’m not stocking any currently but think it’s probably a good idea. I wonder which ones have the longest shelf life for long term storage? One thing I do have a stockpile of is aspirin. Fever can be a killer and the fact that it helps with pain is a big plus too.
Fever can, indeed, be a killer...but you'll probably be better sponging the patient off with tepid (not ice-cold) water.
This point about not using ice water is especially important with very small children, because of febrile seizures.
Everyone thinks that fever seizures in children are because of how hot the fever gets, but this isn't completely correct.
It's more accurate to say that it's how fast the fever goes up and how fast the fever goes down.
Getting panicky and dropping a febrile kid in ice cold water will, indeed, bring the fever down quickly...and make febrile seizures (a lot like a gran mal epileptic seizure, but for different reasons besides epilepsy) a lot more likely.
Believe it or not, a fever can actually be beneficial.
In the years before penicillin and Salversan, doctors actually deliberately infected syphillis patients with malaria, as malaria will completely cure syphillis 1/3 of the time, 1/3 of time it will put the disease into permanent remission, and only 1/3 of the time it doesn't work.
Doctors had quinine (from Chinchona bark) long before antibiotics, so they would treat the malaria after the patient experienced several high fevers from the malaria...and they used Malaria falciparum, which is the worst kind (of the four varieties that infect humans) that causes cerebral malaria.
It was the high fevers that killed off the syphillis spirochete.
The technique was actually revived in the 1990s (and used sucessfully) to cure a patient of Lyme disease (also a spirochete, but in a different family than the syphillis organism), because she was horribly and violently allergic to multiple antibiotics.
They now have better drugs than quinine to treat malaria, so they cured her of malaria after the malaria cured her of Lyme disease. Again, this was because of the fevers.
Sometimes, letting a fever run its course is not the worst idea.
IV fluids (like saline and Ringer's Lactate) can be used to maintain bodily fluids and electrolyte balance, as oral fluids can cause pneumonia (a particularly nasty, often fatal version of the disease called aspiration pneumonia that can happen if stomach contents get into the airway and into the lungs).
Maintaining fluid balance with IV fluids allows the stomach to remain empty, and reduces the risk of this kind of pneumonia.
So, the fever can run its course, and help with the recovery of the patient in many instances.
Ringer's Lactate is normally a perscription item, but can be obtained from veterinary suppliers without a 'script.
Ringer's is better for maintaining fluid balance in a fever patient than normal saline, but it has a disadvantage: a lot of injectable medicines are incompatible with Ringer's, so I actually prefer normal saline...as I can mix IV meds with it when I give injections through the IV line.
Using cold packs in the armpits, groin, and neck will also help a fever if there are issues with sponging the patient down, as might be the case if the patient has been burned, for example.
I hope this info was helpful.
Be careful and do your research when it comes to medical stuff.
