Henriette Kress

Henriette Kress, known as "cyberspace's herbal archivist" [http://home.teleport.com/~howieb/ Howard Brounstein, AHG] is a well-known Finnish herbalist who has developed one of the most encyclopedic noncommercial web sites on herbal medicine worldwide. [http://garden-gate.prairienet.org/teaching.htm Garden Gate Herbal Education page ] [http://www.pitt.edu/~cbw/herb University of Pittsburg herbal sources.html] It contains archives on several public and non public herbal forums, a photographic database of 8,000 botanical plant photos, and reprints of 20 major classic herbal works which had been largely lost to history. The reprints contain information on 4200 different plants, plus those not yet in the plant name database. (For purposes of comparison, a typical Chinese herbalist might use 300 herbs, an American herbalist 50 - 100 and a native Cherokee medicine man 800) [David Winston" Cherokee Herbal Medicine" Medicines from the Earth Conference 2001 01ME07 http://www.botanicalmedicine.org/Tapes/01me/01me07.htm] The classic texts include major works like
* King's American Dispensatory
* Harvey Wickes Felter's Eclectic Materia Medica
* Finley Ellingwood's American Materia Medica

History of the Herbal Web Site

Kress has been active on the web since 1992, and published her first FAQ on herbs for the alt.forklore.herbs newsgroup in 1995. [ [http://www.henriettesherbal.com/thissite.html The history of this site | Henriette's Herbal Homepage ] ] After the Medicinal HerbFAQ [ [http://www.faqs.org/faqs/by-newsgroup/alt/alt.folklore.herbs.html alt.folklore.herbs Newsgroup FAQs ] ] got a good start Larry London (who had a collection on ibiblio) asked if she would do a FAQ for edible herbs as well. So in July 1995 Kress posted the first version of the Culinary HerbFAQ. Shortly afterwards ibiblio asked Kress to host a non-commercial herbal collection and ibiblio would provide WWW and FTP space at a time when private ISPs were prohibitively expensive. Henriette's Herbal Homepage was first published on ibiblio in August 1995 where it lasted until 2005, when it became too popular and moved to its current location. It is one of the oldest herbal sites online, with over 36,000 files, 600MG of information and 122,000 hits a day as of 2006 [http://www.henriettesherbal.com/statistics.html Statistics page from Henriette's Herbal Website] .

Biographical Information

Kress was born in Germany and moved to the Swedish-speaking parts of Finland when young. She obtained a degree from the Swedish Helsinki University of Economics in 1991. She worked in finance then left to study herbal medicine with Michael Moore at the Southwest School of Botanical Medicine [http://www.swsbm.com/HOMEPAGE/ Michael Moore Southwest School of Botanical Medicine homepage] in 1998. She is a professional member of the American Herbalists Guild [http://www.americanherbalistsguild.com/ American Herbalists Guild] . She lectures and travels around the world and practices in Helsinki, Finland.

Publications

Kress is the author of two Finnish herbal books:
* "Mintusta voikukkaan - käytännön lääkekasvit", Edita 2000, ISBN 951-37-3072-7
* "Hanhikista kissanminttuun - käytännön lääkekasvit", Edita 2001, ISBN 951-37-3425-0

She is cited in four books in English on herbs, including Michael Moore, "Medicinal Plants of the Mountain West", "The Guide to Complementary and Alternative Medicine on the Internet" by Lillian R. Brazin, "An Atlas of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease" (Encyclopedia of Visual Medicine Series) by Trevor T. Hansel and Peter J. Barnes and "An Herbal Internet Companion: Herbs and Herbal Medicine Online" by David J. Owen.

References

See also

*http://www.henriettesherbal.com/index.html Henriette's Herbal Website