Historical Origin of the Idiom (Literal Roots)

• Tobacco smoke enemas (literal usage): In the 18th century, medical practitioners in Europe, particularly England, used tobacco smoke enemas as a resuscitation method. They believed administering tobacco smoke via the rectum could stimulate the heart and warm the body, particularly for drowning victims.
  • Richard Mead (around 1745) was among the earliest Western physicians to recommend this method for reviving drowning victims.
  • By 1774, London’s doctors William Hawes and Thomas Cogan established an institution (later the Royal Humane Society) to resuscitate drowning victims — equipping riverbanks with apparatus for tobacco smoke enemas, functioning much like early defibrillators.
  • The practice eventually fell out of favor after around 1811 when researchers discovered nicotine’s toxicity, which exposed the dangers of such procedures.
• Transition to figurative usage: The literal practice may have sown the seed for the idiom, but its leap into slang (meaning insincere flattery) didn’t emerge until much later, around the mid-20th century.

Cultural & Linguistic Context

• Evolutions of slang:
  • The simpler phrase “blow smoke” had already been used since at least the 1940s to mean exaggerate, boast, or deceive.
  • The fuller phrase “blow smoke up someone’s ass” or “butt” emerged as an intensified, more visceral version—likely for rhetorical punch rather than direct reference to medical history.
• Cultural flavor:
  • The coarse addition “up someone’s ass” sharpens the phrase’s impact; it turns ordinary deception into a vivid image of absurd, over-the-top flattery.
  • Though the literal medical practice was largely forgotten, its grotesque, memorably bizarre nature probably lingered in cultural memory making the idiom feel especially abrasive or brutally humorous.