well, lard is from pigs, and suet is the culinary name for beef fat. the suet
you are "supposed" to use, for such delicacies as christmas puddings etc., at
least in English recipes, is leaf suet from around the kidneys. now that we
are all vegetabletarians (that's what we call my husband), let me cite you an
earlier reference for anointing nipples with something similar to crisco.

"Before and after each nursing the nipples should be washed with a saturated
solution of boric acid; between nursings it is well to have the nipples
smeared with vaseline clean from the tube, or cocoa-butter may be used."

Cocoa-butter!  all other chocolate lovers may recognize that cocoa butter as
the fat in chocolate . . . this advice sure explains a lot to me, i must ask
my mother if she followed this advice.

and by the way, the book is "Before the Baby Comes - A Practical, Non-
Technical Manual for Prospective Mothers, by Marianna Wheeler, for Twenty
Years Superintendent of the Babies' Hospital, New York."

Published in 1914.

carol b.