The Most Kissed Girl in the World – REWIND

Originally released Sept. 20, 2021. When the Laerdal Toy Company was tasked with creating the very first mannequin for practicing CPR, they used a familiar face – it was that of “L’Inconnue de la Seine” – a famous mask supposedly cast from an unknown drowning victim discovered in the River Seine in the late 1880s. In this episode, we explore the strange case and then talk to Comedian and Author Dan Wilbur for the Quick Quiz!

James Otis Elam was a physician and respiratory researcher in the U.S. who discovered the concept of “rescue-breathing”- that is, the idea that exhaling into a person’s mouth gave them enough oxygen to help keep them alive. He had been working with iron lungs and, along with Dr. Peter Safar, helped to develop a new life-saving technique called Caridopulmonary Resuscitation, or CPR. This was in the late 1950s and soon the method of rescue breathing and CPR was being taught as a legitimate life-saving practice. Side-note: it should be stated that television and movies have given people a false expectation as to the effectiveness of CPR. There was a study done by the New England Journal of Medicine that showed CPR in TV Shows had a 75% success rate whereas in real life, the success rate is much lower in a person who is not breathing and has no circulation. But with that said, it’s effective enough to still be used and taught – and in the absence of medical professionals, it’s something that anyone can learn and could help some patients until medical assistance arrives. 

But how can it be taught? When it was first developed, students practiced on each other. That’s right. You had people blowing into the mouth and lungs of people who were breathing normally. After awhile, we figured out that this is dangerous. Especially the chest compressions that are taught as part of CPR – it creates significant trauma. If you know anyone who has received CPR, you might know that it’s common for the ribs or sternum to be bruised or even cracked in the process. This is where we meet the most kissed girl in the world: a fictional woman named “Resusci Anne.”

Dr. Peter Safar knew there was a need for a way to practice CPR without using healthy people as subjects. He expressed this to a Norwegian Doctor, Bjorn Lind, who knew of a Norwegian toymaker, Aesmund Laerdal. He approached Laerdal about creating a life-like toy – a dummy that could be used to practice mouth to mouth breathing and chest compressions. Laerdal was on the forefront of creating toys with PVC faces – a doll called “Laerdal Anne,” which was named “Toy of the Year” and became a best seller in Europe. This had led him to create realistic-looking dummies with wounds for military training. He was a natural fit to create the CPR dummy that Safar and Lind were talking about. 

The result was a dummy that – to this day – we know as “Resusci Anne.” It was unveiled at the 1960 International Symposium on Resuscitation in Norway and it was instantly so successful that the Laerdal Company was no longer a toy-maker. Their new mission would be saving lives. Today, the American Heart Association credits Laerdal Products with training half a billion people in CPR and with having saved 2.5 million lives. The original Resusci Anne dolls were very simple in design, but today they make full-size mannequins that provide realistic bio-feedback and sync data to smartphones as the training takes place. 

When Laerdal was developing the Resusci Anne CPR dummy, they recognized that medical professionals were predominantly male at the time and might feel uncomfortable giving mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to a male dummy. They were looking for a female face to use as a model and it turned out there was already a quite famous one. Let’s jump back in time all the way back to the late 1880s.

The story of L’Inconnue de la Seine has various roots, but the result of all of them are the same – a plaster casting of a young girl’s face. The face has delicately closed eyes and a calm expression. Her mouth has a slight, almost knowing smile with the edges turned up. Her hair is short, parted down the middle. 

Some claim that the cast was the death mask of a young girl who died of Tuberculosis in 1975. Some claim that it wasn’t a death mask at all, but was the face of the daughter of a mask-maker in Germany who asked her to model for him.

But the predominant story is the legend of the young woman who was pulled out of the river Seine in the late 1880s. An unknown girl was found in the river near The Quai du Louvre – a walking area near the river Seine. She was anonymous. No one knew her identity, her social station, or her cause of death. Since she had no signs of foul play, suicide was suspected. The custom of the time was to put bodies on display at the Paris Mortuary for people to identify them. There were so many bodies pulled out of the Seine at that time that a special morgue with a public viewing area was built. That remained open from 1868 until 1909. And in 1889, the public viewing area of the morgue was a more popular tourist attraction than the zoo, the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower – which had just been built. But despite the crowds – despite days going by – this one particular girl went unclaimed and unidentified. They local population became intrigued by the girl. Not only that she was a mystery, but that her facial features were so calm and beautiful. The mortuary had a local mask maker come and make a death mask of the girl – this was another practice that was a custom of the time when it came to notable figures. The face became known as L’Inconnue de la Seine – the woman of the Seine.

It was long before the mask of the mysterious woman started showing up for sale at shops along the river, and then throughout Paris and before long, it was common to see the mask hanging in any high-class drawing room. Her face offered mystery, beauty, and Parisians would build their own stories around her. English Poet and Author Richard Le Gallienne wrote a novella in 1900 based on the face, called Worshipper of the Image, in which a poet falls in love with the mask. In 1910, a German author, Rainer Maria Rilke wrote the following passage in his novel: “The caster I visit every day has two masks hanging next to his door. The face of the young one who drowned, which someone copied in the morgue because it was beautiful, because it was still smiling, because its smile was so deceptive – as though it knew.”

The mask lived on through these works, which still continue to this day, by the way – the mask is referenced in several films and albums of the last decade. So when we jump forward from 1900 to the late 1950’s it makes sense that when Aesmund Laerdal was designing his CPR dummy and wanted to use a female face, he would choose this famous and intriguing mask as the face of his Resusci Anne doll.

If you look at those early CPR dummies from the 60s, you can definitely see the resemblance. And even today, when you look at Laerdal’s Resusci Anne, you can see the face of L’Inconnue de la Seine. Using the death mask of a drowning victim to create an educational tool may seem morbid until you think about how famous and intriguing this image was. And the thought of a young girl without an identity going on to save millions is yet one more fantastic story that we have to tell about her.