Dr. Oyswharf

Osywharf carries an echo of "Owsley" - August Owsley Stanley III, described as the "undisputed king of the illicit LSD trade" in Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD: The CIA, the Sixties, and Beyond, by Martin A. Lee and Bruce Shlain.

Lew's hallucinations after failing to wash his hands recall the legend of Dr. Albert Hofman's discovery of the effects of LSD, after accidentally absorbing a small dose through his skin, according to Lee and Shlain. The "Beavers of the Brain" episode that follows sounds like something out of an LSD trip, those "ever-more-polycrystalline luminosities of meaning" [183].

Oyswharf also recalls Osbie Feel, a doper in Gravity's Rainbow. And Hofmann's discovery is mentioned in GR: "Jamf at the time was working for a Swiss outfit called Psycho-chemie AG, originally known as the Grössli Chemical Corporation, a spinoff from Sandoz (where, as every schoolchild knows, the legendary Dr. Hofmann made his important discovery)."