Within the late Nineteen Fifties, Norwegian toymaker Asmund Laerdal obtained an uncommon transient: to design a life-like model that resembled an unconscious affected person.
Peter Safar, an Austrian physician, had simply developed the fundamentals of CPR, a lifesaving method that retains blood and oxygen flowing to the mind and important organs after the center has stopped beating.
He was keen to show it to the general public, however had an issue – the deep chest compressions typically resulted in fractured ribs, which meant sensible demonstrations had been unimaginable.
It was in his seek for an answer that he was launched to Laerdal, an intrepid innovator then in his forties who possessed in depth data of soppy plastics, honed via years of labor with youngsters’s toys and mannequin vehicles. He had even begun to collaborate with the Norwegian Civil Defence to develop imitation wounds for coaching functions.
Laerdal, who had rescued his son from drowning by making use of stress to his ribcage and pushing water out of his lungs only a few years earlier, was keen to assist, and the 2 determined to create a coaching mannequin.
The Norwegian toymaker had a imaginative and prescient: It wanted to look unthreatening, and assuming that males wouldn’t wish to carry out mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on a male dummy, it needs to be a girl.
So he went in search of a face.
The unknown lady of the Seine
It was on the wall of his parents-in-law’s dwelling within the picturesque Norwegian metropolis of Stavanger that he discovered it.
It was an oil portray of a younger lady, her hair parted and gathered on the nape of her neck. Her eyes had been closed peacefully, her lashes matted, and her lips curled in a faint, sorrowful smile.
This was a face which, within the type of a plaster forged, had adorned houses throughout Europe for many years.
There are a lot of rumours as to how the unique masks was created, however one story that has cemented itself as city legend is that it was of a girl who had supposedly drowned within the Seine River in Nineteenth-century Paris.
Within the French capital on the time, it was frequent for the our bodies of the deceased who couldn’t be recognized to be positioned on black marble slabs and displayed within the window of the town’s morgue located close to Notre Dame Cathedral.
The aim of this apply was to see if any members of the general public would recognise the deceased and have the ability to present details about them. But, in actuality, it grew to become a morbid attraction for Parisians.
Because the story goes, a pathologist, struck by her magnificence and serene expression, commissioned a sculptor to provide a loss of life masks of her face, a plaster or wax mould of an individual made shortly after loss of life.
No paperwork survive within the Paris police archives, and it’s unimaginable to confirm the reality of this story.
Nonetheless, a sculpture of the supposed loss of life masks captured the general public’s creativeness, and reproductions of it started to flow into within the early twentieth century.
Her face quickly embellished Parisian salons and rich folks’s houses.
The visage was often called L’Inconnue de la Seine – the Unknown Lady of the Seine – and it grew to become a muse for writers, poets, and artists.
The French author Albert Camus known as her the “drowned Mona Lisa”, whereas the Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke mentioned of her serene expression, “It was stunning, as a result of it smiled, as a result of it smiled so deceptively, as if it knew.”
Resusci Anne
It isn’t recognized whether or not Laderdal was conscious of the legend behind the portray in Stavanger, however in 1960, he gave it new life when the primary CPR doll was formally launched with the topic’s face.
The doll was given a mushy plastic torso – a compressible chest for practising CPR – and open lips for mouth-to-mouth rescue.
She travelled world wide, showing in hearth stations, colleges, hospitals, scout teams, and airline coaching centres, the place she was used for CPR coaching.
She was additionally lastly given a reputation, “Resusci Anne,” by Laerdal, a shortening of the phrase “resuscitation”. Anne is a standard feminine title in Norway and France, which means that by this stage, the toymaker was conscious of the legend behind the face. Within the English-speaking world, she grew to become often called “CPR Annie”.
“Annie, are you OK?” grew to become the go-to coaching phrase as folks simulated examine for responsiveness within the occasion of a cardiac arrest.
Within the Nineteen Eighties, a couple of century after Annie was reported to have been discovered within the Seine, Michael Jackson immortalised her in popular culture.
Because the story goes, the famous person heard the phrase throughout a primary assist coaching session and, struck by the rhythm and urgency of it, labored it into the chart-topping tune, Easy Legal, repeating it like a heartbeat: “Annie, are you OK? So, Annie, are you OK? Are you OK, Annie?”
‘She can be proud’
Laerdal died in 1981, however the firm he based, Laerdal Medical, continues to be a juggernaut in emergency medical coaching and the event of cutting-edge healthcare know-how.
Annie herself has obtained technological upgrades, together with flashing lights, lung suggestions, and sensors that indicated if compressions had been off-rhythm.
However her face stayed the identical.
Pal Oftedal, director of Company Communications at Laerdal Medical, says that no matter whether or not the story behind Annie is true, she has had a optimistic impression on partaking folks worldwide within the lifesaving apply of CPR.
He mentioned that one in 20 folks would witness a cardiac arrest of their lifetime, with 70 % occurring outdoors the house.
The American Coronary heart Affiliation says that rapid CPR can double and even triple an individual’s probability of survival after a cardiac arrest.
Annie has been joined by a brand new number of mannequins that includes a spread of ethnicities, ages, physique sorts, and facial options as Laderdal seeks to diversify its product choices.
Laerdal Medical estimates that Annie and her fellow resuscitation mannequins have been used to coach greater than 500 million folks worldwide.
Oftedal says that he believes whoever Annie was, he’s positive “she can be pleased with the necessary contribution she has made to the world”.
This text is a part of ‘Bizarre gadgets, extraordinary tales’, a sequence concerning the shocking tales behind well-known gadgets.
Learn extra from the sequence:
How the inventor of the bouncy citadel saved lives
How a well-liked Peruvian mushy drink went ‘toe-to-toe’ with Coca-Cola