There should be laws against this sort of thing

That's not a sentence, but an outrage.

This evening I thought I'd resume reading Cotton's translation of Montaigne after a bit of a break from it over the past few days. I hadn't got far into Essay XX Of the Force of Imagination when I encountered this monstrosity of a sentence. (The prefatory statement is in brackets.)

(Simon Thomas was a great Physician of his Time:) I remember that hapning one Day at Tholouze, to meet him at a rich old Fellow’s House, who was troubled with naughty Lungs, and discoursing with his Patient about the Method of his Cure, he told him, that one Thing which would be very conducing to it, was, to give me such Occasion, to be pleased with his Company, that I might come often to see him, by which Means, and by fixing his Eyes upon the Freshness of my Complexion, and his Imagination upon the Sprightliness of Vigour that glowed in my Youth, and possessing all his Senses with the flourishing Age wherein I then was, his Habit of Body might, peradventure, be amended, but he forgot to say that mine at the same time might be made worse.

Strangely enough, I can follow this 130-word horror without quite as much bother as I might've expected from it. Montaigne's original words, an addition in the Bordeaux text, are

Simon Thomas estoit un grand medecin de son temps. Il me souvient que, me rencontrant un jour chez un riche vieillard pulmonique, et traittant avec luy des moyens de sa guarison, il luy dist que c'en estoit l'un de me donner occasion de me plaire en sa compagnie, et que, fichant ses yeux sur la frescheur de mon visage, et sa pensée sur cette allegresse et vigueur qui regorgeoit de mon adolescence, et remplissant tous ses sens de cet estat florissant en quoy j'estoy, son habitude s'en pourroit amender. Mais il oublioit à dire que la mienne s'en pourroit empirer aussi.

a sentence which is barely less unpleasant than Cotton's translation.

As for this Simon Thomas, he was obviously a great quack because if this was considered to be competent medical advice, I can only imagine the carnage he left behind after making a house call. But perhaps he wasn't that big a quack because his so-called cure is psychological. The old man might be entertained by the presence of some youth and, therefore, his mind distracted from the problem he had with his lungs, which Thomas might've known to be incurable.