Tinnitus plus psychosomatic

[Rosemary C Hyde PhD]

I happened to be glancing through an old copy of Mathur's book, "Principles of Prescribing," and noticed it has a chapter on "psychosomatism," which didn't really have anything new to say on the subject, except this case of tinnitus. It was interesting to me that it addressed two issues we've been discussing recently.

The operational definition here of psychosomatic is a physical symptom with a clearly psychological origin. The case was a man who had received shocking news of the death of a close friend, and immediately developed an intractable tinnitus in the left ear. The remedy that made it go away "instantly" was Gelsemium, prescribed based on the symptom of left-sided tinnitus plus the rubric "Ailments from bad news."

It confirmed that at least sometimes tinnitus can be treated homeopathically with great effectiveness.

As I was reflecting on this discussion, it had also occurred to me that sometimes tinnitus seems linked to pathological damage to the cilia in the hearing organs, in which case it may well not be amenable to homeopathic treatment.

I've treated it successfully in two patients. In one it was so long ago I can't remember what the remedy was (and don't have time to look it up right now). The other, more recently, responded to Pulsatilla.

Rosemary
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