Attention is paid to hair.

In our culture the hair industry is huge — shampoos, conditioners, coloring, cutting, shaping, styling. For “hair-loss treatment” alone, Google conjures up 749,000 references. Some people undergo surgical procedures, sometimes uncomfortable and expensive, to implant hair.

Total hair loss is often an unfortunate and undesirable complication of the agents used to treat and cure cancer. Yet baldness — the hairless look — can for some represent spirituality and religion, or for others may suggest that they are athletic, smart, cool, reeking of testosterone.

Depending on where you are in your life, what you are doing, your age and sex, baldness is loved or hated — or just accepted. Baldness can be bought and bought off. But it is not a medical treatment, at least not since shaving the head for lice was stopped.

In one patient, however, shaving the head was life saving.

A 50-year-old woman was admitted to the hospital with complaints of severe weakness and difficulty breathing. She had been quite healthy until the afternoon of the admission, with no history of serious illnesses.