Morten Ansgar Kveim

Morten Ansgar Kveim first studied philology until 1918, when he entered the medical study, graduating in 1925. He subsequently worked in the small communities of Lom, Askim, and Alvdal, at Aker sykehus in Oslo. During 1927 and 1928 he practiced in Risør, a small town on the south coast of Norway. In 1929 he first came to the department of diseases of the skin at Rikshospitalet, where he became assistant physician in 1936. From 1931 he also had his own dermatological practice in Oslo. During the summer of 1937 he visited various university skin clinics in Germany, Switzerland, France, Austria, and Hungary.

Kveim made the important observation that sarcoid lymph-node tissue inoculated intradermally gave rise to papules of sarcoid tissue in 12 of 13 of his sarcoidosis patients. Simultaneous control injections with Frei antigen and tuberculin did not produce this response. Since this reaction did not occur in normal subjects, nor in patients with lupus vulgaris, he concluded that the papules were specific lesions due to an unknown agent and that the test served to differentiate sarcoidosis from tuberculosis.

His hobby was ornithology. Kveim had a son and a daughter who followed their father into the medical profession.

We thank Anne Lie for information submitted.

• Tre tilfelle av morbus Gaucher.
  Norsk Magazin for Lægevidenskapen, Oslo, 1935: 696-711.
• Om elephantiasis, spesielt elephantiasis nostras. Et kasuistisk bidrag til læren om dens etiologi og patogenese.
  Norsk Magazin for Lægevidenskapen, Oslo, 1935: 1093-117.
• Drei Fälle von morbus Gaucher.
  Acta dermato-venereologica, Stockholm, 1936; XVII, fasc. 5: 500.
• Über adenoma sebaceum (morbus Pringle) und seinen Platz im neuro-kutanen Syndrom – tuberöse Gehirnsklerose – und dessen Beziehung zur von Recklinghausens Krankheit.
  Acta dermato-venereologica, Stockholm, 1937; XVIII, fasc. 5: 637.