Since paraldehyde is an excellent hypnotic, it was decided to prepare a number of substances which would be analogous in their basic structure to the aldehyde, namely, 1, 3- dioxolanes and 1, 3-dioxanesa It had been shown by Knoefels that certain alkyl derivatives of these parent compounds do exhibit hypnotic activity. However, except for 4, 6, 6-trimethyl- l, 3-dioxane which was found to be active when administered orally to rats, all of the ...