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This article looks into the interest shown by French anthropologists, in the second half of the nineteenth century, in the work of hygienists on relationships between the environment, hygiene and circulation. With a focus on the question of air, we attempt to show how ventilation was only one of the manifestations of a more general concern over the circulation of elements. Sensations—smells, noise and sounds, light and color—were assumed to act, via the environment, upon the sensory organs. Investigations into the differences between European and non-European peoples led anthropologists to take an interest in cultural variations in the adaptability of the sensory organs.