Elvis Presley’s Controversial Doctor ‘Dr. Feelgood’ Dies At 88

Elvis Presley’s controversial physician Dr. George Nichopoulos has died at the age of 88 according to a funeral parlor in Tennessee. Memorial Park Funeral Home and Cemetery made the announcement on their website on Wednesday, the official cause of death is unknown at this stage.

A funeral home says Elvis Presley's former personal doctor has died. https://t.co/WqQfKccipb

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Dr. Nick was Elvis Presley’s personal physician for 11 years and is said to be a contributing factor to the King of Rock n’ Roll’s death. Dr. Nick was given the nickname “Doctor Feelgood” because of his apparent liberal prescription policy. Dr. Nick was accused of enabling Elvis Presley’s pill addiction, which could have contributed to his untimely death at 42 years old in 1977.

The Tennessee Board of Medical Examiners suspended and ultimately revoked Dr. Nick’s medical license in 1995 after it ruled he had over-prescribed potentially addictive drugs to 13 patients, including Presley and fellow country western singer Jerry Lee Lewis. The investigation found that “the doctor himself agreed that some of his patients were addicts, yet he gave them their drug of choice,” according to board member Dr. Edgar Scott. Dr. Nick tried unsuccessfully to reinstate his medical license in Tennessee in 1998.

According to Elvis Presley’s autopsy, Elvis died of hypertension and not an overdose, although heart beat irregularities were also noted. Dr. Nick maintained up till his death that he was treating Elvis Presley for insomnia and did not contribute to his passing. Elvis Presley was found dead on his bathroom floor at the age of 42 in his Memphis mansion. Dr. Nick became the subject of scrutiny when Elvis died, and was accused of prescribing and administering various pharmaceuticals that were not relevant to the singers ailments.

“I don’t regret any of the drugs I gave him.They were necessities.”

Dr. Nick spoke of the difficulty in treating Elvis. If he refused Elvis drugs, the singer would simply go to another more willing doctor for a hit. Dr. Nick claimed he was worried about the singer’s fate after a pair of overdoses in 1973, so he tried to control him. Dr. Nick denied he encouraged Elvis Presley to take more pills and said he did his utmost to control Elvis’ appetite for pills and move him away from addiction. Dr. Nick claimed he would often trick the singer by giving him placebo pills or shooting him up with saline solution.

Dr. Nick was a controversial topic of discussion and remained a complex figure right up to his death. He was seen by some as an enabler that fueled his patients addictions, but by others he was viewed as a caring man, a friend, and a dedicated doctor. Robert Gordon, a noted author and music historian also from Memphis, believed Dr. Nick tried to save Elvis.

“Dr. Nick was not perfect, and he was working at a time when the public’s relationship with celebrity culture and addiction was very different, not so understanding…But Dr. Nick knew that medicines came to Elvis from a variety of sources, and he tried hard to find allies in Elvis’ camp to help him control the flow. He’s too often the villain in the Elvis story, too rarely recognized for the hard work he did to keep the pills at bay, to get Elvis healthy with exercise. He was handed a difficult patient and … did his best to save his life and his career.”

A jury in 1981 acquitted Dr. Nick of criminal charges of “indiscriminately and negligently prescribing drugs to Presley.” He was also exonerated of 11 counts of criminally over-prescribing addictive drugs to the rock ‘n’ roll icon Lewis and seven other patients. Despite Dr. Nick being acquitted in 1981, he was hounded by the medical board because of his practice, and the death of Elvis haunted him for 39 years. A 1959 Vanderbilt University School of Medicine graduate, he eventually lost his medical license during another case in 1995.

Dr. Nick was a veteran as Elvis was and was of Greek decent. He was born in Pennsylvania and spent most of his life in Memphis, Tennessee, which is where he died on Wednesday. The former physician is survived by his wife, Edna; two daughters, Elaine and Christine; a son, Dean; three grandchildren; and nine great-grandchildren.

Services will be held for Dr. George Nichopoulos at the Memorial Park Funeral Home and Cemetery in Memphis on Saturday, Feb. 27, at 10 a.m. Burial with military honors will be held immediately following in Memorial Park Cemetery.

[Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images]