The original manikin upon which most people learn CPR was not just a randomly sculpted generic face. It was modelled in 1960 by toymaker Asmund Laerdal, based on L'Inconnue de la Seine, a young unidentified Parisienne who drowned in the late 1880s. The air of romantic mystery surrounding her body inspired quite a few artists, and for a time death masks made from her visage were quite the rage in Bohemian society. It was one of these masks, seen hanging on a wall, that inspired Laerdal in his creation of Resusci Anne-- a doll inspired by a drowned woman that helps train people in saving (among other things) drowning victims. Beautiful, no?Except of course that it's not quite true. According to a recent episode of Radiolab, there probably wasn't actually any drowned woman. An interview with a gendarme who worked the riverbanks revealed that women who were pulled from the Seine simply did not look that good. Other reports agree-- these plaster masks were based on a living girl, probably just some model doing a day's work. So much for romanticism.
All tings considered, I'd just as soon not do mouth to mouth on a drowned woman, unless they got her out of the Seine really quickly.
ReplyDeleteWell, to be fair, that is more or less exactly what mouth to mouth is for.
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