Dr. George Nichopoulos wasn’t the first nor the last doctor to open his prescription pad too liberally to the rich and famous. A year after Howard Hughes’ skeletal remains forced Wilbur Thain to face scrutiny, and long before Conrad Murray ever met Michael Jackson, Nichopoulos was called into question (and eventually placed on trial) for indulging Elvis Presley’s medicinal habits. He was acquitted on all counts, but two decades later the man known as “Doctor Feelgood” had his license revoked for overprescribing, which he acknowledged doing. “I cared too much,” he said in his defense.
Nichopoulos just died. The opening of a NYT report of his 1981 trial:
MEMPHIS, Oct. 30— Dr. George Nichopoulos took the witness stand today in his own defense and flatly denied criminal charges that he overprescribed controlled drugs to Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis and seven other patients. He asserted that his healing duties as a physician were always uppermost in his mind.
Dr. Nichopoulos acknowledged that, as Mr. Presley’s personal physician, he prescribed numerous narcotics, sedatives and stimulants for the singer. But the doctor insisted he did this in the hope of gaining control of a drug dependence that was already established in Mr. Presley and the others. All those named in the indictment had been getting drugs from other sources, Dr. Nichopoulos testified.
”The goal with all these people was to control the medication,” he said in a quiet voice from the witness stand. Prosecutors have produced prescriptions written in Mr. Presley’s name over the last 31 1/2 months of his life, calling for more than 19,000 doses of narcotics, stimulants and sedatives.
However, the defense attorney, Jim Neal, has asserted that many of these drugs were thrown away and that placebos, or inactive pills, were substituted for others. The prescriptions were written, the attorney said, to convince the entertainer that he was receiving real drugs when he was in fact receiving many placebos. Relief of ‘Pain and Suffering’
And there were valid medical reasons for Dr. Nichopoulos to prescribe many of the drugs to Mr. Presley, the lawyer added. ”Did you try to relieve the pain and suffering of Elvis Presley?” Mr. Neal asked. ”Yes,” replied the physician. ”Did you in good faith try to reduce Mr. Presley’s drug habit?” ”Yes.” ”Dr. Nichopoulos, are you guilty of the charges in this case?” ”No.” Over the last seven months of Mr. Presley’s life, Dr. Nichopoulos testified, he wrote seven letters to drug manufacturers ordering placebos. The last of these letters was dated Aug. 12, 1977, four days before Mr. Presley died inhis Memphis mansion, Graceland. The Shelby County medical examiner ruled officially that heart disease caused his death.
Dr. Nichopoulos also testified that Mr. Lewis, also a singer, and the seven other patients named in the indictment were in better condition today, mentally and physically, than they were when they first came to see him.•