This text is part of an ongoing investigation on medicine and slavery that aims to set the groundwork to understand the conceptions and knowledge on the diseases and ailments of slaves in the Captaincy General of Chile during the second half of the eighteenth century. The redhibition of slave María Josefa due to an old and incurable disease is analyzed according the ideas about her suffering. The text shows how the same ailments in the body of the slave were used as framework in the litigation.