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George Nichopoulos, the physician known as Dr Nick who treated Elvis for the last decade of his life, has died aged 88 (pictured in 1992)

George Nichopoulos, the physician known as ‘Dr Nick’ who treated Elvis during the final decade of his life and was accused of helping cause the singer’s death by over-prescribing drugs, has died aged 88.

He passed away on Wednesday in his home town of Memphis, Tennessee, according to officials at the Memorial Park Funeral Home and Cemetery, who gave no cause of death.

For decades the grey-haired Dr Nick was a well-respected but largely anonymous member of a Memphis group practice. Even when he began treating The King in 1967, his name was unknown.

It was not until shortly after the singer’s death in 1977, when a cocktail of 14 different drugs were found in his system that Dr Nick’s name became headline news – for all the wrong reasons.

Born in Ridgeway, Pennsylvania, in October 1927 to Greek immigrant parents, Nichopoulos grew up in Anniston, Alabama, after his father moved there to open up a cafe.

He served in the medical corps of the U.S. Army from 1946 until 1948, before going on to study at the University of the South. He earned his medical licence from Vanderbilt University in 1959.

An esteemed Memphis physician, he once said in an interview with The Observer that the parents of an AIDS sufferer bought the house next door to his, so he could treat their child until he died.

At the time he was introduced to Elvis, he was just one doctor in a practice of six others, specializing in internal medicine.

Elvis came to Dr Nick in 1967 looking for treatment for insomnia which was caused, at least in part, by his reliance on amphetamines which were prescribed as an appetite suppressant at the time.

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Dr Nick (pictured in 1970, to the left of Elvis) was accused of helping cause the singer’s death after it was discovered he had 14 different drugs in his system when he died

According to Dr Nick, it soon became clear that The King was reliant on a cocktail of uppers and downers to get him through his grueling touring schedule – including amphetamines in the morning to wake up, and tranquilizers at night to wind down.

Speaking in 2002, Dr Nick said: ‘He was always childlike with these things. I don’t think he ever realised how harmful these things could be to him.

‘If he got a sore throat, and I gave him penicillin tablets – I gave him 20 to take, saying, “You take four a day of these things until you use these up,” – he’s going to take eight or 12 a day until he uses them up, because he thinks he’ll get well faster.’

After several hectic years of flying out to treat Elvis on the road, returning to his Memphis surgery in between, Dr Nick eventually took on the job full time in 1970.

From then until the end of Elvis’s life, he had unrivaled access to the singer, traveling with him everywhere and prescribing the drugs he believed he needed to get through the day.

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During Dr Nick’s trial it was revealed that he prescribed Elvis 10,000 doses of various drugs during 1977, the year that he died (pictured), though he argued he was trying to reduce the singer’s doses

In one year alone, the year of Elvis’s death, Dr Nick wrote prescriptions for 10,000 doses of assorted narcotics for The King.

Following the singer’s sudden death in 1977, officially from a heart attack, Dr Nick was accused of contributing to it by administering a cocktail of drugs interacting in unknown ways inside his body.

However, Dr Nick maintained that he was constantly trying to lower the doses of drugs Elvis was taking, giving him placebos when he demanded more.

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Dr Nick was acquitted of causing Elvis’s death, but was stripped of his licence in 1995 after another over-prescribing scandal

Dr Nick also maintained that the singer had a habit of going behind his back to other physicians to get what he wanted, if he was refused drugs.

Following Elvis’s death, Dr Nick was charged with 14 counts of over-prescribing drugs to him along with 12 other patients, including Jerry Lee Lewis.

He was eventually acquitted on all counts, but his reputation never recovered. Known as a ‘Doctor Feelgood’, he was mocked in the mainstream media and spoofed by the incompetent character of Dr Nick Riviera – also known as Dr Nick – in The Simpsons.

In 1980 he was again put on trial for over-prescription and found guilty but it was decided his conduct fell short of being unethical, and he was served with a three month suspension of his licence and three years’ probation.

His licence was eventually revoked in 1995 after more accusations of over-prescription, when he told a jury he ‘cared too much’ when handing out drugs.

After that his name became a byword for irresponsible celebrity care, and was mentioned during Dr Conrad Murray’s trial following the death of Michael Jackson in 2009.

According to a deposition in Jackson’s wrongful death trial, tour manager Paul Gongaware warned Jackson’s 1993 tour doctor, Don’t be a Dr. Nick’.