Following the death of his mentor Cai E and his first wife, Zhu developed a severe opium habit that afflicted him until 1922, when he underwent treatment in Shanghai.
The British East India Company established a monopoly on opium cultivation in the Indian province of Bengal, where they developed a method of growing opium poppies cheaply and abundantly.
Zeitlinger had developed a severe cough, and he took a swig of an opium-infused Thai elixir, ominously labelled "BROWN MIXTURE".
Americans were developing a taste for opium too, particularly after Civil War veterans returned home with morphine to dull the pain of battle scars.
Opium was widely used in laudanum, and heroin was developed from opium towards the end of the century.
The fortune was founded upon trade in (among other goods) textiles, tea, dried fruit, metals and, when the link with China developed, opium, as well as property in Bombay, Shanghai and Hong Kong.
While thus neglected, it developed into the opium-growing heart of a complicated insurgency in which drugs, tribal politics and Islamist militancy all play a part.
This year, the aid workers should be prepared to pay farmers compensation for any opium crops they are unable to harvest as a result of the fighting, and the Western coalition should help the groups develop a microcredit system.
I called Follis, who describes himself as "an Irish boy from St Louis", to tell me more about the brotherly relationship he developed with the powerful opium king, a man he would ultimately have to screw over.
