Lauretta Eby Kress (February 10, 1863 – June 28, 1955), also known as Etta, was a Canadian-American obstetrician who was the first woman to practice medicine as a licensed physician in Montgomery County, Maryland.

She met Daniel H. Cress (later Kress), in Canada, and the couple moved to the United States after marrying.

[5] From the 1890s to the very early 1900s, the couple worked as medical missionaries in London and Australia, at the personal urging of Seventh-day Adventist cofounder Ellen G. White.

[11] Kress and her husband published the Good Health Cookery Book, in which they advised readers to eat only two meals a day, both vegetarian, one early in the morning and the other in the mid-afternoon.

[12][13] Kress convinced her future husband not to smoke or drink, and they were lifelong advocates of abstinence from both, and also from eating meat.