The unknown girl from the river Seine
In the early 20th century, the unidentified body of a young girl was pulled from the River Seine in Paris. An employee of the morgue was so entranced by the young girl’s ethereal smile that he made a plaster death mask of her. Eternally capturing her blissful appearance.
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
