salubrious sə-ˈlü-brē-əs adjective
1. promoting health; healthful
2. favorable to health of mind or body
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The word salubrious has appeared in seven articles on NYTimes.com in the past year, including on May 11 in the Ask Well column “If Fever Helps Fight Infection, Should I Avoid Fever-Reducing Drugs?” by Richard Klasco, M.D.:
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.
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