What constitutes a great medical discovery? Just ask Dr. Gerald Friedland, a resident at The Terraces of Los Gatos and the co-author of  Medicine’s 10 Greatest Discoveries. The answers in his book cover broad ground, from understanding the human anatomy to the development of anesthesia and the mapping of DNA.

But an independent observer might argue that a few of Friedland’s own discoveries should at least be considered. His research in radiology and embryonics has led to improvements in the lives of countless individuals.

As recognition of that fact, the Stanford University School of Medicine recently honored Friedland with a Lifetime Achievement Award for his many contributions to medicine.

This honor follows the establishment of the Gerald W. Friedland Learning Center at the Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Hospital's Diagnostic Radiology Section in 2004, the same year he and his wife, Miriam, moved to The Terraces.

Born and educated in South Africa, Friedland completed his medical training in Scotland before moving on to London's Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children. Here Friedland met and married Miriam in 1961. Two children followed.

Eventually, the young family considered a move to the United States. California's climate and Stanford's reputation led Friedland to investigate Palo Alto, and in 1967 he arrived to begin a job as assistant professor of radiology.

While on sabbatical in 1974 from Stanford at the Carnegie Institute of Embryology at the University of California, Davis, Friedland noticed something odd. The textbooks’ descriptions of embryonic development were based on specimens from the turn of the 20th century.

Using more recent embryos that represented much earlier stages of development, he co-authored a peer-reviewed study that shed new light on fetal development.

As a result, doctors had to completely rethink the stages of embryonic growth and gained better understanding of conditions like fetal alcohol syndrome, caused by a mother's excessive alcohol use while pregnant.

"It's very important to realize that these things [such as fetal alcohol syndrome] can develop much earlier than previously thought," he says. "This research has also enabled us to determine exactly when congenital anomalies occur."

Friedland is also known for two other major discoveries. In the first, he used radiological techniques on organs from cadavers to settle a long-running debate over whether the lower esophagus had a single sphincter at the top, bottom or one running the length of the organ. His research determined that observations of each different sphincter in fact represented "different" phases of the organ's muscles contracting and relaxing over its length.

In the second, he helped develop a process to view the urethras of spinal cord injury patients using ultrasound while working at the Palo Alto VA Hospital. This eliminated the need for X-rays, which repeatedly bombarded patients reproductive organs with radiation.

"By using ultrasound, which was harmless, it made a huge difference," he says. "And it came about accidentally."

That accident occurred when Friedland was using ultrasound to view a male patient's prostate. He saw the urethra using the same perspective and realized viewing the urethra in this way would eliminate the need for excessive X-rays.

"The most important thing with all this is to use a little imagination, because a lot of people wouldn't have thought to use the view to help spinal cord patients," he says. " It just requires one to fall back on one's imagination, which I think is a very important thing in medicine."