An antibiotic is a substance produced by microorganisms that inhibits or destroys other microorganisms. To be classified as an antibiotic, a substance must be produced through microbial metabolism, be a synthetic analog, antagonize other microbes' growth at low concentrations. Major antibiotic discoveries include penicillin in 1929 and its therapeutic use in 1938, along with sulfonamides in 1936 and subsequent discoveries of broad-spectrum antibiotics in the 1940s-1950s that ushered in the antibiotic era. Antibiotics are classified based on their chemical structure and pharmacological activity against fungi, cancer, typhoid, diarrhea, and tuberculosis.