The Story of Anne
(the girl from the Seine)
At the
turn of this century, the body of a young girl was
pulled
from the River Seine in Paris. There was no
evidence
of violence and it was assumed she had taken
her
own life.
Because
her identity could not be established, a death
mask
was made, as was customary in such cases. The
young
girlâs delicate beauty and ethereal smile added to
the
enigma of her death. Romantic stories that
speculated
on this mystery were published. According to
one,
her death was the result of an unrequited romance.
This
story became popular throughout Europe, as did
reproductions
of her death mask.
Generations
later, the Girl from the River Seine would be
rediscovered
when Asmund S. Laerdal began the
development
of a realistic and effective training aid to
teach
mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. He believed that if
such
a manikin was life-sized and extremely realistic in
appearance,
students would be better motivated to learn
this
lifesaving procedure. Moved by the story of the girl
so
tragically taken by early death, he fashioned her
mask
for the face of his new resuscitation training
manikin,
Resusci Anne.
Resusci
Anne celebrated her thirty-fifth birthday in 1995.
Inspired
by The Girl from the River Seine, Resusci Anne
has
become a symbol of life to the millions of people
throughout
the world who have learned the lifegiving
technique
of modern resuscitation, and to those whose
lives
she has helped save from unnecessary death.