Dr. George C. Nichopoulos, who was Elvis Presley’s personal physician in the decade before his death in 1977 and who lost his medical license for overprescribing addictive drugs for years to numerous patients, died Wednesday in Memphis. He was 88.

Dr. Nichopoulos was the doctor on call at a medical center in Memphis in 1967 when he was summoned to treat Presley at his home, Graceland.

The singer was at the time suffering from saddle sores caused by too much horseback riding.

Doctor and patient struck up a rapport, and for the next few years, whenever Presley flew in from Hollywood, Dr. Nichopoulos treated him for a variety of complaints, most related to insomnia and rheumatic pain.

After Presley returned to Memphis permanently in 1970, Dr. Nichopoulos became his primary physician and something more.

“I was one of his closest friends,’’ he told investigative reporter Gerald Posner for a 2009 article in The Daily Beast.

“At times I was his father, his best friend, his doctor. Whatever role I needed to play at the time, I did.’’

Presley was found slumped over in a bathroom in Graceland, dead, on Aug. 16, 1977. He was 42.

The county medical examiner found the cause to be coronary arrhythmia, or irregular heartbeat, resulting from hypertensive heart disease related to high blood pressure, but a toxicology report fueled speculation that drug use had played a role. It showed “significant’’ levels of codeine, the sedative Ethinamate, quaaludes, and an undetermined barbiturate.

Lesser amounts of morphine, Demerol, Placidyl, Valium, and Chlorpheniramine, an antihistamine, were also found.

In a 1981 interview with American Medical News, Dr. Nichopoulos said he had prescribed only two of the drugs in the report.

In 1980, Dr. Nichopoulos was indicted on 14 counts of overprescribing stimulants, depressants, and painkillers for Presley, the singer Jerry Lee Lewis, and several other patients.

Two counts dealing with Presley accused Dr. Nichopoulos of “unlawfully, willfully and feloniously’’ prescribing, in the months leading to Presley’s death, a cornucopia of narcotics, painkillers, depressants, and appetite suppressants.

Dr. Nichopoulos was acquitted of all charges, but in 1995 the Tennessee Board of Medical Examiners permanently suspended his medical license, stating that he had been overprescribing to numerous patients for years.

In one of several appeals to the board, Dr. Nichopoulos admitted overprescribing — in 1977 alone he wrote prescriptions for more than 10,000 doses of opiates, amphetamines, barbiturates, tranquilizers, hormones, and laxatives for Presley — but denied being a “Dr. Feelgood’’ feeding his patient’s addictions.

“I cared too much,’’ he told the board.

In his memoir, “The King and Dr. Nick: What Really Happened to Elvis and Me,’’ written with Rose Clayton Phillips and published in 2010, Dr. Nichopoulos explained that the medications were intended for Presley’s entourage, band, and production crew, whom he treated on the road.

He maintained that he had tried, in vain, to cure Presley of his addictions, often administering placebos.

“Elvis was a firm believer there was a medicine for everything,’’ he told American Medical News.

“You know how some people will sneeze and think they need a pill, or get a muscle cramp and want relief, or go to the dentist and need a painkiller? Others aren’t bothered. Elvis was convinced he needed drugs.’’

In 1980, before the indictment, the state board of medical examiners, while clearing him of charges of unethical conduct, barred him from practicing medicine for three months and put him on probation for three years, a prelude to the permanent suspension of his license 15 years later.

“They just never stopped going after me,’’ Dr. Nichopoulos told The Daily Beast. “They always wanted a scapegoat for Elvis’ death.’’