Objective To explore the rule of medication for treating tinnitus in medical cases in Ming and Qing Dynasty. Methods The Ming and Qing dynasty medical records related to tinnitus treatment in the Chinese Medical Dictionary were collected. The information on prescription drugs in medical records was collected to establish a database. The drug classification and efficacy

property

taste and channel tropism were recorded. The clustering and association rule analysis were performed for the high frequency drugs. Results Totally 98 cases of tinnitus treatment were included

involving 209 prescriptions and 160 herbs. The top five herbs used were Fuling（ Poria

114）

Gancao（ Radix Glycyrrhizae

73）

Dangshen（ Radix Codonopsis

48）

Danggui（ Radix Angelicae Sinensis

47）

and Banxia（ Rhizoma Pinelliae

45）. The top three drugs used were classified as clearing heat（ 336）

and invigorating spleen（ 200） and removing dampness（ 148）; the herbs were mainly cold（ 729） and warm（ 506） in property

and the taste were mainly sweet（ 901）

bitter（ 745）

and pungent（ 276）. Cluster analysis was performed on 29 high-frequency drugs with frequency larger than 20

and 5 groups of core drug clusters were obtained. When the relative distance was 1

4 groups of 4 drug core clusters were obtained. Through the analysis of association rules

a total of 22 drug pairs and drug group association rules were obtained. Conclusion In the Ming and Qing Dynasties

the treatment of tinnitus is mainly for clearing heat

invigorating spleen and removing dampness. The clinical practice should not be limited to the use of liver and kidney. Attention should also be paid to conditioning the spleen and stomach and heart channel medicine.