Cool find. Note that there’s a space between the ‘E’ and the ‘P’. It doesn’t say ‘DEPRESS’, but says ‘DE PREE’, which is for the De Pree Chemical Company of Chicago. Con De Pree and John Van Zoeren founded the company in 1907 to produce a deodorising product under the brand name ‘San-Tox.’
They had gone bust by 1933 but re-emerged not long afterwards and reintroduced San-Tox (later called ‘Nurse Brand’) as a line of toiletries, using ‘Enchantment’ as the marketing name for their fragrance, including talcum powder. Like this:
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I don’t know what your tube held, but I would guess a stick deodorant (the technology for those has been around since 1888). If it’s actually a spray (looks like there might be a small nozzle at the top), it
could be a small atomiser. I don’t think they made perfumes or body sprays but they did produce an oral deodorant tablet based on chlorophyll so they might possibly have had an equivalent breath freshener spray.
Depending on how the thing opens, it might conceivably have held a stack of those tablets.
They were bought out in 1977 by the Chattem Drug Company.
