POLL-EVIL 
The Poll 
The poll or nape of the neck of quadrupeds 
having a long highly mobile neck and large 
head is an important region. Although less 
complicated from the anatomical standpoint 
than the withers it is nevertheless composed of 
a great many separate anatomical structures 
and although more shallow than the withers 
its relations to the large nerve centers makes 
affections of the poll more or less dreaded from 
the view point of disease and of surgery. The 
structures involved in poll-evil are contiguous 
to the coverings ‘of the spinal cord in the 
atlanto-axoid space, to the occipito-atlantoid 
articulation and finally to the meminges and 
the brain. It is plain that no chronic patholog- 
ical process so serious as poll-evil can so- 
journ unchecked without sooner or later im- 
plicating some of these structures if not all of 
them. The surgical anatomy of the withers 
does not include a trochoid articulation and its 
relations to the spinal cord are more remote. 
The surgical anatomy of the poll includes, 
the skin, the pad of the mane, the atlas, the 
