Few people know the story behind the creation of the CPR manikin used practically all over the world: her name is Resusci Anne. But what connection could a manikin possibly have with a girl who drowned in the Seine, in Paris?
The Unknown Woman of the Seine Link to heading
The story took place in France in the last decade of the 1800s. The body of a young woman was pulled from the Seine — an event that, for the time, was far from extraordinary. She bore no signs of violence; it was therefore assumed she had taken her own life. Taken to the morgue, an attendant was struck by the girl’s beauty, but above all by her smile: it seemed to radiate a sense of peace and serenity.
After making a plaster cast of her face, the unknown woman was displayed in the morgue window so that passersby might identify her (this was normal practice at the time — death was an everyday occurrence).
No one recognized the body, which received a common and anonymous burial.
We will never know how much of this story is true; what we can say for certain is that, by the early 1900s, the phenomenon of the Unknown Woman of the Seine became very popular, first in Paris and then throughout Europe.
Many intellectuals of the caliber of Rilke, Nabokov, Camus, and Aragon were inspired by this story. Her enigmatic smile was often compared to that of the Mona Lisa, so much so that the girl appeared in the stories and essays of the era. It is as if that smile of hers represented the serenity of death compared to the torment of life.
The story inspired almost half a century…
The Pioneer of CPR Link to heading
In 1958, Peter Safar created a new rescue technique for cardiac arrest victims that combined mouth-to-mouth resuscitation with chest compressions: what we now call Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation, or CPR. It is a revolutionary technique because it makes basic resuscitation a tool within everyone’s reach: no longer just healthcare professionals, but also laypeople are able to resuscitate a patient by following an exact sequence of assessments and actions. This technique is effective but requires hands-on practice to be performed correctly: for this reason, a training aid is needed to master it. Safar thus turned to Asmund S. Laerdal, a vinyl toy maker by trade, and commissioned him to design a manikin suitable for the purpose. Mr. Laerdal, who knew the story of the Unknown Woman of the Seine, decided to give the girl’s face to his manikin, naming it Resusci Anne.
If we want to see an allegorical meaning in all of this (quoting the Laerdal website, which still manufactures and sells this type of manikin today): from the mask of death to the kiss of life.
