By what change did Lister's death rate for his own patients fall?

• A. 60% to 20%
• B. 25% to 5%
• C. 46% to 15%
• D. 30% to 0%

Answer: (C)

The main idea is that infection control dramatically cut deaths in surgery. After Lister started using antiseptic methods (carbolic acid) to sterilize wounds and instruments, his own patients’ death rate dropped from about 46% to about 15%. That big improvement shows how eliminating infection changed outcomes in the operating room. It’s a drop of roughly 31 percentage points, a reduction of about two-thirds in deaths, which is exactly the kind of transformative result antisepsis produced in that era.