Hearing loss is hearing loss and, like, say, losing your sight, no, I don't think a placebo can change that. And while people experience hearing loss in correlation with having tinnitus, causation's a question.
I have tinnitus in both ears and hearing loss and have for, I think, somewhere around 20 years. I have the world's spiffiest hearing aids to help stop me from leaning in too close to people to catch what they're saying or have everyone repeat themselves several times before I understand what's being said. (The technology in these things is way cool. They aren't amplifiers. But that's a whole other thing.)
They do not, however, help in the least with the high-pitched whine that I hear in both of my ears 24/7. Part of my hearing loss is as a result of any sounds in the same pitch range as the noise in my ears is silent to me because they cancel out. It's dealable.
My audiologist told me that there was a new body of research and a new line of thinking with regard to tinnitus and that's that it doesn't have to do with the ear. He said that some people were so troubled by the ongoing noise that they had surgery to have pieces of their inner ear removed, and the sound didn't go away. There's now -- according to him (and if I go and see him again, I'll see if I can get specific medical journal references and whatnot) -- a belief that the "noise" that people with tinnitus hear in their ears is actually emanating from the base of their skull. That something neurological is going on and misfiring messages to the portions of the brain that perceive sound. And telling those portions of the brain that there's a sound where there is none. The audiologist I go to said that there have been experiments on the brain where they touch certain portions of it and make the "noise" stop.
So it's rather a phantom noise with nothing to do with the ears, but your body perceives that the sounds as coming from your ears because that's where we hear sound. If I can find the research on it, I'll share.
Meantime, okay, let's suspend all disbelief for a moment about liquids that don't contain anything other than alcohol, water, and some flavouring and say, okay, maybe it can work. It, apparently, targets the entirely wrong area of the problem, and so I don't see how it could. Assuming I thought there was any legitimacy at all to homeopathy, beyond the placebo effect.
And I've tried a bunch of stuff for this noise in my ears, and I'm a huge fan of the placebo effect, and I've not found a thing to make this stop. Yet.
P.S. zooby, the book you recommended is fascinating.