She continued her education at the University of Chicago in Illinois, earning a PhD in pharmacology in 1938 and an MD in 1950. As a pharmacologist, she would study drugs and their use in human medicine. She married fellow university faculty member Dr. Fremont Ellis Kelsey in 1943, and they eventually had two daughters. After completing an internship at Sacred Heart Hospital in Yankton, South Dakota, in 1954, Frances Kelsey became an associate professor of pharmacology at the University of South Dakota. The next year, she became a naturalized U.S. citizen. In 1957 Kelsey left her professorship to open her own private practice, which she ran until 1960 when her husband took a position that required the family to move to Washington, D.C.
Early in her career, Kelsey had investigated, with her husband, the effects of drugs on bodies at different stages of life. The couple published the results of their findings in several respected scientific journals, such as the Journal of Pharmacy and Experimental Therapy. In one study, the Kelseys discovered that the bodies of adult rabbits, pregnant rabbits, and rabbit embryos all reacted to the drug under investigation in different ways and that it proved deadly to the embryos.
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