7 October 2020

Key points

  • An ordinary fever does not reach the point of damaging the brain.
  • What people mean by a fever “burning the brain” comes from children who caught meningitis. Meningitis brings a fever, and its complications affect the brain tissue, the nervous system and the intellect.
  • So the accurate way to put it is that the meningitis, with its fever, has affected the brain tissue or the nervous system — not that the fever itself burned the brain.
  • Only at something close to 41 or 42 degrees would the temperature itself stand a chance of affecting the brain tissue.