Why is the CPR manikin named Anne?

Answer 1

There is an urban legend regarding the CPR manikin's name:

"You may have heard the story of how "Annie" the CPR doll came to be. As the story goes.. A Swedish doctor's 16 yr old daughter drowned in an ice covered pond behind his house. When they got to her they did not do CPR on her because the paramedics did not have the training. When the DR asked why they did not do CPR it was explained that the only way to train CPR was on a cadaver - so the good DR then made "Annie" to help train others on CPR. "Annie" and the male version "Andy" were made to look like his daughter at 16, blond hair, short and named after her "Annie" as a tribute to her.".

This legend is a myth.

In the mid-1950s, Dr. Peter Safar, a pioneer in emergency medicine, developed a method of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation combined with chest compression; in 1958 he presented a paper on this technique in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Safar believed his methods could be employed by those outside the medical field to save lives, provided these laypeople were given adequate training in his techniques. To more effectively teach this procedure to them, he envisioned having a life-sized doll that novices to cardiopulmonary resuscitation could practice on, and so he approached toymaker Asmund Laerdal with the idea of developing a realistic mannequin for CPR training. Laerdal took up the challenge.

The face Laerdal used for his training dummy was that of "L'Inconnue de la Seine," the by-then well-traveled death mask of an unknown Parisian girl. The modern CPR dummy was built in 1960 and sold under the name "Resusci Anne." In North America she has been christened "CPR Annie." Many a student of basic CPR has been taught to check if a patient is unconscious by gently shaking the doll and calling, "Annie, Annie, are you OK?"

The legend collides with reality in that while the doctor behind the creation of CPR Annie did not model its face after that of his deceased daughter, he was indeed the father of a girl who died in childhood. In 1954, Dr. Peter Safar and his wife, Eva, produced a daughter, whom they named Elizabeth. This girl child came into the world prematurely, and soon after her birth she was diagnosed with severe Asthma. She suffered from this malady throughout her brief life, which ended at age eleven in 1966 after she underwent an asthma attack and slipped into a coma.

Answer 2

It is the face of 'L'Inconnue de la Seine', a woman that committed suicide by drowning, she became the subject to the pioneers of CPR.

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