'The Most Kissed Lips in History' Helped Save Millions of Lives; Face of Mysterious Dead Woman Used to Design Popular CPR Dummy
An allegedly drowned woman found in Paris became the reason for saving millions from imminent death. L'Inconnue de la Seine (the unknown woman of the Seine) was supposedly pulled from the murky waters of the Seine River in the late 19th century, Science Alert reported. She was estimated to be 16 years old, with many speculating she took her own life.
The woman's body was put on display for the public in a mortuary, and her beauty allegedly captured an individual's attention so much that he ordered a plaster cast of her face, Science Alert reported. This plaster cast and the features it managed to capture became famous worldwide, eventually becoming a useful tool in the popularization of the CPR technique.
The cast featured an attractive face, a hint of a smile, and somewhat closed eyes, BBC reported. The beauty captured by the cast was so alluring, that artists during the 19th century began using the woman as a muse. The cast's output was replicated in masks which sold at an alarming rate in the market. Soon all fashionable rooms in Europe contained a mask featuring the L'Inconnue de la Seine's face.
The woman's features continued to captivate people well into the next century. Asmund Laerdal, a successful Norwegian toy manufacturer, encountered the beautiful face in the form of a mask at his grandparents' house. In 1955, the man saved his son by pulling him from the waters, just in time to clear the airways. Shaken by the incident, Laerdal decided to contribute as much as he could to protect humans from drowning.
Authorities approached Laerdal with the request to create a whole-body mannequin, to showcase the CPR technique. CPR was a newly developed method, that combined chest compression along with the 'kiss of life' to save the lives of victims, whose hearts had stopped. His son's accident a few years ago, made him agree to the proposition.
The making of the body did not pose any problems, when it came to the face, Laerdal wanted a natural appearance. He decided to take the face of a woman because he believed it would be less threatening for the trainees. Still remembering the features of L'Inconnue de la Seine from his grandparents' home, he decided to replicate them on the mannequin. Laerdal named his model Resusci Anne.
L'Inconnue de la Seine's captivating beauty worked its magic again and several people managed to get stellar training using her as the subject, Science Alert reported. Laerdal's company estimates that around two million people have been saved by the CPR technique.
The use of L'Inconnue de la Seine's features as the CPR mannequin made more people interested in her origin tale, BBC reported. Many people questioned the drowning story associated with the woman. Chief Brigadier Pascal Jacquin stated that people who drown, don't have such smooth features. "It's surprising to see such a peaceful face," he said. "Everyone we find in the water, the drowned and suicides, they never look so peaceful. They're swollen, they don't look nice."
Michel Lorenzi, the current proprietor of a workshop in Arcueil, believes that a model was involved in the cast making rather than a corpse, BBC reported. "This doesn't look to me like the face of a dead person. It's very hard to maintain a smile while a cast is being taken so I think she was a professional, a very good model," he said.
Several experts believe that the woman's beauty fired up the imagination of individuals at that time, and people began to attach their own formulated stories to her identity, The Guardian reported. "The facts were so scarce that every writer could project what they wanted onto that smooth face," museum archivist Hélène Pinet explained. "Death in water was a very romantic concept. Death, water, and woman was a tantalizing combination."