November 6, 2008

• Kiss of Life, Kiss of Death

  The most kissed girl in the world…is a suicide victim.

  At some point in your lives, I am betting most of you took a CPR class, perhaps in high school, or college, or for the biennial recertification the healthcare world requires of us. And when you did, you were introduced to Resusci-Annie, that armless, legless, torso with a mouth just partially open to receive the breath of life, a sleeping beauty whose prince charming will never arrive.

  In the late 1890′s in Paris, a young woman was pulled out of the Seine River. There was no indication of violence, no marks upon her body, and she was presumed by the police to be a suicide victim. A pathologist in a Paris Morgue made a death mask of her face, struck by her beauty as the story goes, and she became known as L’Inconnue de la Seine
  
  Her visage captivated europe and the mask was circulated widely, with all the movers and shakers of the age writing about her in stories and keeping copies of her death mask in their private collections. German youth especially held it as a standard of beauty and imitated the look and style of this “lost lover”.

  In 1958 Dr Peter Safar developed a method of mouth to mouth resucitation combined with chest compression he believed could be employed by those outside the medical profession to save lives, provided laypeople were given adequate training techniques. To more effectively teach this procedure he approached Norwegian toymaker Asmund Laerdal with the idea of developing a life size doll.

  Laerdal happened to have a copy of the death mask himself and used it as the model for ResusciAnne, called CPR Annie in the US. When the first CPR classes were taught in the 1960′s, enrollees were taught to shake the doll and ask Annie, Annie, are you okay? before beginning CPR

  For almost half a century, millions of stangers have pressed their mouths over hers, those lips he exact drowned lips. For the rest of history, all over the world, people will be trying to save this same dead woman.

  This woman who just wanted to feel death’s embrace now teaches us all to give the kiss of life.
  

  • 1:13 pm
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