NOT a “need answer fast” question, thankfully.
I know it is not recommended to warm up a hypothermia victim too quickly, and wonder if it applies the other way around - is it dangerous to cool down a hyperthermic (over-heated) person too rapidly as well?
Suppose you had a child left in a hot car, or other similar person whose core temperature was way too hot - would it be dangerous to just immerse them in an ice-cold bath right away, or is any such danger overriden in light of the overheating posing an even greater risk?
A cold bath is a recommended first aid treatment for heat stroke: Hyperthermia: Symptoms, Treatment, and More
… which doesn’t mean there’s no danger, just that when things have gotten to that point, the greater danger is not cooling them off quickly enough. Like how a tourniquet is not your first go-to when someone’s bleeding; the cold bath doesn’t seem to be recommended for lesser forms of hyperthermia. But that’s as far as my Red Cross course took me.
No, it’s much more dangerous to let their body heat remain too high. The safer choice is to bring their body temperature down immediately. In the Army, we do this with sheets soaked in ice water. The patient’s clothes are removed and they are wrapped in freezing wet sheets from head to toe with no regard for “cooling them too quickly”. Every few minutes, the sheets are swapped or re-doused with ice water since the body heat quickly warms them. Once the soldier’s core temperature falls below 100, the sheets can be removed entirely.
ETA: Coolers full of sheets soaked in ice water are kept on hand during all hot weather training events. (In case you’re wondering where they come from). They’re always on hand and at the ready.
In my military training, for heat stroke (red, hot, dry skin) we were taught to bring down the body temp as fast as possible. That includes dousing the person with buckets of water.
and you only have to cool them a few degrees hey. Well most of the tissues will be fine as long as not literally frozen, but the internal organs won’t. The thing is that the body can generate kW of heat, so you are going to need get the skin working as a powerful cooler …if the patient starts going into hypothermia the change is obvious, you know the fever is over.